Prodded to Drown
by sudowoodo
Summary: I try remember the basics first, while curled up in a ball in this cave. My name is Annie Cresta. My home is District 4. My parents died in a sailing accident. My best friend just got beheaded in front of my eyes. And … my mentor has a crush on me? … No?
1. Chapter 1

**Prodded to Drown**

**I try to remember the basics first, while curled up in a ball in this little cave. My name is Annie Cresta. My home is District 4. My parents died in a sailing accident. My best friend just got beheaded right in front of my eyes. And … my mentor has a crush on me? ?**

**No. No, that can't be right. Let me try again.**

* * *

**Chapter 1**

I was screaming. I was screaming and screaming and screaming and I couldn't stop. I think I screamed for an eternity. Or at least until I was all screamed out. And then, I was running.

And now I'm in a cave. Curled up on my side in the foetal position, the stones leaving a jagged imprint on my bare arm and on the side of my face. I can still smell the sickening metallic scent of his blood that splattered my face. My heart is thumping in frantic rhythm against my ribcage. I can't shut my eyes, they stay open. Wide and unblinking and staring at nothing. Because I fear what I might see when my eyelids close.

I'm shaking all over and I start to rock myself gently because it's comforting. Ever so slightly comforting.

It's the moment two loaves of bread appear that I realise I'm crying, my body racking with desperate, hysterical sobs. I throw one loaf away and press the other to my cheek, hugging it close and trying to use it as a sort of pillow. It's still warm. I try to drain some affection out of the thing before I remember that it's an inanimate object. I'm getting the crust soaked with my tears, but I wouldn't be able to eat it anyway. The other loaf was probably meant for Lance, whose name now only brings to mind the image that shattered what sanity I had left. Him, slumping to his knees and then falling headfirst into a shallow pool of water. We used to hunt for barnacles together in the tide pools of the beaches back home. Now his life was leeching into the clear spring water and turning it a deep, blood red. But he didn't_ quite_ fall headfirst, you know, because the problem was the head. It rolled three metres and came to a halt right at my feet.

His light golden eyes met mine. Drained of life, mouth half open in surprise, he stared unseeing into my soul. That's when the screaming starts. As it turns out, I don't need to close my eyes to see his death all over again. Now it's all I can see. Before long I've crushed the bread to crumbs in my fists.

I can feel my mind breaking into pieces and there's no way I can stop it. I'm trapped. Not just in this cave, not just in the arena, but inside my own head.

I need to get out.

I'm utterly helpless. I have no control of my own destiny, but someone does. No, not some one. Some _thing._

Something called the Capitol.

The screams continue inside of me long after my voice is lost. And they never cease. So when the waves crash into the cave and throw my lifeless form spinning against the rocks, I'm actually grateful. After fearing water for half my life, I welcome the rolling sea into my little dwelling. It reminds me of home. And as the flood rushes around me and engulfs my brain, I finally feel happy. I'm the little boat, floating gently on the crests of the waves. I've found my peace. Now there's nothing to fear. I swim towards the light - happy, elated. I can finally let go.

But, of course, it's not my liberty to decide when it's over. My fate is not in my own hands. And the Masters of Fate had other plans for this little boat.

* * *

AN:

Hi there! I was rereading _Mockingjay_ this morning, and this idea just came to me so I went with it. I said to myself, Why not conform and write a FinnickXAnnie love story? So then I did! And here it is!

The next chapter will flashback to Annie's reaping, and after that we'll slowly catch up to her now in the arena. And the aftermath. And my own version of how she and Finnick fell in luuuurve. *BTW coming chapters shall be much longer!* Haha, so it's gonna be good, you'd just better keep reading! :) I finished a long story recently so I'm just having fun with a few different ideas at the moment. So I'll pay more attention to this if there's a bit of interest.

If it's good, please please please alert and review :) And if it's not good, constructive criticism is always appreciated. This is my first ever non-OC fanfiction, I think :P So I hope you enjoy it!

Thanks for reading!

xD


	2. Chapter 2

Wow, OK I have no idea where this came from. But I think I went all out on this chapter. Maybe it's too much? … Not enough? Please remember to let me know what you think! Every single comment gives you a better story and makes the next chapter come quicker! :D

* * *

******Chapter 2**

I've been scared of the water since I was nine years old. (And I was nine years old almost nine years ago.) That day, the storm clouds came in so suddenly. My grandparents were minding me at the time, but I went into a panic at the thought of my parents out there, sailing through the storm. As a child I caused a lot of trouble, getting over-excited or over-worried or simply over-emotional about lots of things. I'd blank out and then find myself lying curled up beneath the bushes of the back garden. Sometimes it would be Lance's garden, sometimes gardens of my neighbours or people I didn't know at all. And I'd have no idea how I ended up there.

But this tantrum was different. I ran out of the house, too fast for my aging baby-sitters to catch me. What's different is that I can so perfectly remember sprinting out onto the beach, searching the waves for the little boat.

The clouds were thick and layered and grey. Black in some places. And the waves were grey and green. And the wind had whipped my hair around my face so hard that it hurt. I remember that most of all.

It had been a wedding present from my mother's parents, the little boat. It showed that they approved of my father, I suppose, and of my mother taking his surname. _The Crest of the Moon. _The Moons happily welcoming the Cresta boy to the family.

I could see the crests of the waves, foaming and crashing powerfully down from heights of twenty feet or more, but I couldn't see _The Crest of the Moon. _Maybe it was crazy of me, I don't know, but it seemed like the only thing for me to do was to rush out onto a high bank of rocky dunes and dive straight into the furious, churning sea. I was a good little swimmer – it comes with a life in District 4. But I wasn't _that_ good. How could anyone be that good? But for a split second I thought I saw it, not too far out, a brown little currach riding along the top of the surf. And that's why I jumped. I guess I thought that I could reach them. It was _very_ important that I warned them about the storm.

The rocks could have killed me. _Should_ have, really. But, somewhat miraculously, I was discovered unconscious on the beach the next morning. Grammy Moon said the mermaids had kept me safe. I knew that it had to be true. But the mermaids couldn't have brought my parents back because grown-ups aren't allowed to see merpeople. If they do, they turn into sea bass. (The grown-ups. Not the merpeople.)

So the only explanation is that the merpeople saved my parents lives, but in doing so my parents were turned into sea bass.

I'd be worried about them getting caught in the fishermen's nets and winding up on my dinner plate, but I know my dad would at least be smart enough not to swim anywhere near the fishing grounds. Unfortunately, that also meant they could never come close enough to shore to see me ever again.

I'm sad about my parents, but I understand, too. At least I know that they're still out there, living happy lives as fish. It's not like they're _dead _or anything.

Now, it's not very easy living in District 4 and being completely frozen with terror of going anywhere near the water's edge. That's one thing for sure. But I was lucky. My grandfather had fished until he was an old, old man. People don't retire here, you just stop working when you can't physically get up for another day of labour. So when he came out of the fishing business, he and my grandmother set up a little shop below their house on the seafront. They sold cheap trinkets; seashells with googly eyes and little dolphins and fishes and stars moulded from clay or carved out of driftwood. After my parents disappeared I lived with them. So I collected the shells, the dead crabs, the molluscs and barnacles from the sand and the rocks. Having this very special job meant I didn't have to go anywhere too near to the water, so I was just as happy as a member of the Amphiprioninae family!

(… Happy as a clown fish.)

As I got older the tantrums subsided into mood-swings, the hyperactivity into impulsiveness, the attention lapses into simple boredom. These things were all considered normal for a seventeen year old girl. (Which is what I grew to be.)

The moods weren't so bad now, but I still had trouble telling dreams from reality. Though it was hardly noticeable. And I didn't mind swimming around the shallower tide pools, because I couldn't possibly drown in them unless someone literally held my head under the water. But when I think about that I find myself squatting behind the dunes with my head in my hands and grinding my teeth and hyperventilating. So I just don't think about it.

Lance Coquille, he went to sea;  
Silver buckles on his knee.  
He'll come back to marry me!  
How many days 'til he comes back?

One – two – three – ffff-

Finnick Odair is bright and fair,  
Combing down his ginger hair!  
Tie him up and bring him there –  
Finnick Odair IN HIS UNDERWEAR!

Lance was fishing for anemones in the tide pools, holding his sides with laughter as I sang.

"Why did you change it to Finnick Odair? Why can't Lance be bright and fair?" he asked, pretending to be offended. It used to confuse me so much when he did that, but after a while I understood. If he was _actually_ offended then he'd go all quiet. That turns out to be even more confusing for me, when people say one thing when really they might be feeling something else. But at least I always knew when he was _not_ angry.

I chuckled. "It just seemed to work, you know? I mean, what good rhymes does Lance have? Other than Lance's chance to prance and dance … in his underpants. Finnick Odair in his underwear. I dunno, it just works better!"

"You were thinking about Finnick Odair?" he asked slyly.

"I was thinking about the reaping."

He smiled at me and nodded.

"Are you jealous?" I asked. I was not teasing him, I was just asking because I honestly couldn't tell.

Lance was my friend because some people got annoyed when I ask questions like that. I can tell they're annoyed because their voices get angry, defensive. But Lance understood that I just wasn't able to decipher it for myself and that he needed to tell me. People are so confusing, and each person's face is so different that it's difficult to read their expressions. Even more so when everyone's so reluctant to tell you things. He was my friend for other reasons, too, but that's just one of them.

"No," he said, splashing me with a bit of water. "Why would I be jealous of the Capitol's play-toy? And am I helping you do your job here, or doing it all by myself?"

I swung my ankles in and out of the crisp, clear water as I sat on a rock watching him. "I can't get my new dress wet."

Lance looked down at his new trousers which were rolled up to his knees, where all the tiny inconspicuous splashes that wouldn't have been noticeable individually had come together to soak the ends, tainting the tan flax a darker brown. He wrung his hands dry and sighed. "Well, if I end up on that stage today looking like a drowned rat, I'm blaming you."

* * *

I went home and Grammy Moon sat me in front of the mirror to do my hair. My hair is naturally wavy, it comes with living by the sea. The water droplets on the gusty breezes and the salt in the air gives it a windswept surf look, with which I never bother to disagree. Grammy brushed the brown locks with sun-tints of orange and gold, and braided the front into a fish-bone plait with her shaky fingers. There's a thin, sea-green ribbon braided through the plait. Grammy Moon has an eye for beautiful things, which is why she ties back the bangs like that. To show my pretty face. I looked at myself and realised that I must be pretty. Because Grammy Moon doesn't lie.

* * *

I was singing again by the time we got to the town square. You could see the shore from there, falling away endlessly to the right.

Annie Cresta went to sea,

Silver buckles on her knee …

"… Finnick Odair in his UNDERWEAR!" I finished, before I even realised I was yelling the last word at the top of my voice. I stopped and looked around.

The person taking names gave me an odd look, and I glanced over at Lance at the next table.

He didn't frown and say, "_Annie_," in a stern tone, or avert his eyes and blush in embarrassment. Instead, he grinned. Lance never just humoured me. That's another reason we were friends.

I stood in the pool of girls, all seventeen years of age. I stood with my head down, repeating the protocol to myself over and over under my breath.

If you hear 'Annie Cresta' – that's your cue. Shut up and walk to the stage.

Annie Cresta.

Only if you hear 'Annie Cresta', though. Only those words.

Annie. Cresta. Stage.

There was a ribbon around my waist, green and shiny, and little sparkly shells sewn into the front of my dress. I was distractedly picking at the glittery bits that littered the low, heart-shaped neckline before I remembered the reaping. I blinked furiously for a moment and turned my attention to the stage. But it was okay, Mayor Randall was still just giving a speech that I automatically tuned out. All I was waiting for was the 'Annie Cresta' that may or may not be said.

Finnick Odair (thankfully NOT in his underwear) sauntered onto the stage then, dressed in black trousers and a deep green shirt, his copper-coloured hair shining ginger in the sunlight. There was a little exchange of banter between himself and Esmé Salinger, the escort for District 4. She was a young woman who looked the absolute height of elegance and aristocracy; from her purple-y black hair cut at smooth angles and curves around the snowy white skin of her face – to the lacy blouse and long, tight grey skirt that could be glimpsed beneath the thin midnight blue coat that reached the ends of her clunky shoes, which appeared to have live fish swimming around the clear plastic heels.

But however mature and composed Esmé appeared to be, whenever she opened her mouth it became all too clear that her mind was about as developed as that of a thirteen year old. She was lame and ditsy and shallow.

And I rather liked her.

Also, she had the strangest way of acting around Finnick – squeaking shrilly with laughter at everything he said, taking every opportunity to touch his arm, or pull his cheeks like he was still the gorgeously cute fourteen year old boy he was when he won the Games. Now he was the gorgeously handsome nineteen year old young man, and Esmé's blush showed up through all the powder and make-up whenever he was anywhere in the vicinity. Finnick teased her relentlessly, but playfully.

The Capitol's playboy, they called him. Or the Capitol's play-toy, as Lance and I did.

She was at the first bowl, pawing through a jumble of pieces of paper with girls' names scrawled on them in careful letters, her long nails looking strangely like they were bending as they swept over the glass. I squinted my eyes and stood on my toes, examining her fingers from a distance. I only realised when she retracted her hand with a flourish that the fingers clutching the paper had feathers protruding from them, making her nails look like long, curving claws.

Hear Annie Cresta – you walk. If you don't hear that then don't move a muscle until you're sure other people are definitely leaving.

Annie Cresta!

Annie Cresta!

Annie Cresta went to sea

Silver buckles on my knee …

Who'll come back to marry me?

It was only when I found myself already standing on the stage, with my breaths coming in gasps, that I realised they must have called my name. My body had followed the protocol while my mind was temporarily oblivious. I decided to stay oblivious for a little while longer because the glaring truth was simply too big to deal with right away.

Up close, Esmé's powdered face looked three-inches thick.

"Is there anything you'd like to say, pet?" she asked with a simper, offering the microphone in the direction of my lips.

I looked out at the crowd, which was far too thick to see individual faces. Not Grammy or GaGa Moon. Not Lance. Not the neighbour kid who used to flick beetles into my hair. My head started to swim and I knew that the realisation was overriding the peaceful oblivion. That lovely ignorance before the truth sunk in was floating away.

I was going into the Hunger Games.

"Finnick Odair in his underwear," was what came out of my mouth.

There was a brief silence and then a few chuckles and groans could be heard from the crowd. Esmé held her hand daintily over her lips, which was pretty pointless because I could still hear her snickering.

I glanced at her. Was there a real person in there under all that Capitol couture? I wouldn't have thought so, but for the fact that I could hear a human voice behind it all.

"Wow, I … I just said that out loud, didn't I?" I said with a nervous laugh.

And from behind me I heard a voice that drawled, "Something you'd like to _say_, not something you'd like to _see_, Annie Cresta."

I spun around and glared at Finnick, the owner of those mocking words, lounging lazily in his chair beside the mayor and old Mags. He was grinning and then he raised his eyebrows at me.

I turned back around to face the crowd, frowning deeply. Finnick was teasing me the way he teased Esmé. And he teased her because she was such a blithering little idiot. _I _was not a blithering little idiot. I was average height for my age! And I most certainly did not want to see Finnick Odair in his underwear. I saw enough of him at these things once a year! Too much, even.

Finnick, Finnick, went to sea,  
He'll come back to marry me!

He's my love forever more,  
How many days 'til he comes back?

One – two – three –

Lance Coquille, he went to sea …

"Lancelot Coquille?"

There was a quiet din from the crowd but all I could hear was my own blood rushing in my ears. I twisted around to ogle at Esmé, who in turn shot me a startled glance. I opened and closed my mouth like a fish out of water in indignation, spluttering on my words, refusing to believe it –

"It's Lancelet," I choked out.

Esmé pursed her lips and looked around the crowd with an awkward little laugh. "Excuse me, dearie?"

"It's Lance-_let_," I repeated, my voice wavering now. I could see the crowd of children splitting as the male tribute was making his way towards the stage, but I refused to look out at him. "-_let, _not_ -lot_. L-E-T." I didn't even want to get started on his surname, which she had pronounced Koo-_kweel_.

I noticed that Esmé's eyes had lashes that appeared to be made of more long, thin feathers instead of short hairs. I carelessly looked away from them to see Lance making his way onto the stage. His tanned face was pale and tight with barely controlled anguish and his eyes very wide. He crossed the stage, pushing past Esmé to embrace me, but the Peacekeepers grabbed his arms and pulled him back. The bottoms of his trousers were still all creased and damp from earlier. Our gazes locked for a second.

And then it finally hit me, and I burst into tears.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

"You can just call me Lance," he was saying, as I pressed both hands over my mouth and screwed my eyes up and sobbed.

I felt a strong hand tighten on my shoulder and looked sideways and upwards to see Finnick Odair standing by my side; clearly trying for smooth, comforting gentleman but only really succeeding in making me cry even harder. I _despised_ Finnick. And then the genuinely offended look on his face made me give a short, strangled burst of laughter. The irony of that made me sob harder still. And so there I was, standing in front of my whole district in some maddened state somewhere between tears and giggles, and then I realised that I was in front of the whole of Panem, too. I spun around, turning my back to the crowd, and dropped my head fully into my hands, shuddering and choking on each breath.

Then a withered old hand shoved Finnick squarely in the chest and he staggered back in surprise. Old Mags appeared and put her arms around me, pulling me into a soft, warm hug. I put as much of my weight on the old lady as I thought she could handle and cried into her shoulder.

"Do you two … know each other?" came Esmé's singing voice through the microphone.

Lance paused and said, "We're best friends."

Mags reached up to pat my back, and I gave a great deep gulp of breath and pulled away from her hug. I smiled a wet thank you and shuddered before turning back to the crowd. Finnick helped her back into her seat and then took his place beside me once more. I refused to look at him. My toes were wet through my sandals and it took me a moment to realise that it was from my own tears, dripping down my nose and splashing down on them. I wiped my face and kept my head down.

While staring at my feet I noticed the high-heels with the real swimming fish being replaced by a pair of weathered grey sandals on the big, powerful feet of Mayor Randall. A large man, just as dark as any of the men who spent half their lives on the boats in the sun, the mayor was big-boned and hardy-handsome like his sons Felix and Gerard in my class at school. Then I realised that their names were now safe. They were eighteen, like Lance, but they had escaped the horrors of the Hunger Games forever. Unlike Lance. Well, at least until they had kids of their own.

A thought burst into my head and I glanced up and turned my head to the seafront, but I could only see the white waves rolling back and forth. Forth and back. And forth.

Finnick noticed my sudden distraction and seemed to think I was looking at _him_ (I figured this because Finnick Odair could hardly be too difficult to read since he only ever thought of himself anyway), so I stood on my tip-toes and craned my neck to make it clear I was looking past him at the ocean.

He elbowed me gently in the ribs. "Eyes front, Tribute Cresta," he whispered.

I dropped down onto the flats of my feet and, without looking at him, said, "I wasn't looking at _you_, Finnick Odair. I was just wondering if I could see my parents from here."

Finnick looked surprised, but turned and gazed from one end of the beach to the other. He wrinkled his brow at me when he turned back. "Why – shouldn't your parents be in the crowd?"

"No. They're in the sea."

Finnick blinked down at me for a moment. "Why?"

"Because," I whispered, rolling my eyes and facing to the front like he said. "They're sea bass." Then I quickly recounted the story to him in a hushed tone while Mayor Randall read from the Treaty of Treason in a deep, boisterous voice.

When I had finished relaying my parents' tale, Finnick took me in for a moment. He wet his lips and furrowed his brow as his green eyes ran all over my face. Then he turned back to look out at the sea. "Well, it's a shame they're too small to see from all the way over here."

I nodded in agreement but then forgot his existence for the remainder of the ceremony. And before I knew it, I was standing in a fancily decorated room in the Justice Building.

I stood by the window that looked out into the town square where the last few stragglers were dispersing. A group of under-twelves were racing each other towards the beach, oblivious to their current safety, or the fact that they hadn't long until it was going to be stolen from them. None of us were ever really safe anyway. I was staring intently at the waves, feeling as if there was something on the tip of my mind that I wasn't quite grasping, when the door opened and my grandparents ambled in.

They sat down on the small plush sofa while I sat cross-legged on the floor in front of them. We looked at each other for a bit, and then I sighed, stood up, and squashed myself in between them, kicking my feet up on his knees and resting my head in her lap. Grammy stroked my hair which was already tangled from the wind and GaGa lightly tickled my ankles. I curled up and hugged myself while we sat there for a while. Eventually I slid to the ground and knelt before them, taking each of their hands in my own.

"Okay," I started, with a certain amount of strength in my voice, "the next time we meet …"

My head cocked towards the window like a rabbit. You could here the waves from here, the children playing in the sand, the seagulls circling overhead with begging cries …

I felt someone squeeze my left hand and GaGa saying, "Annie, dear …"

I looked back around and shook my head vigorously. "Right. Sorry." It took a moment before I remembered what I had been trying to say. "The next time we see each other … it won't be … with our _eyes_," I said.

"Well, what'll it be with, then?" asked GaGa Moon, laughing gruffly. "Our toes?"

"_No_," I said impatiently, rolling my eyes. "We won't have those either. It'll just be … dust."

Grammy's eyes were wet, but GaGa continued on. "What dust? Like the dust bunnies under your bed? The dust on the shelves?"

Suddenly my eyes widened in a mixture of fear and realisation. "Maybe. At some point, I guess." I shook myself. "But I mean dust like – like particles, you know? Living in the earth and in the air and in everything that's in need of _life_."

I stopped and looked at my hands.

"Well, it's finally happened," said GaGa with a sigh. "She's finally lost her marbles!" Grammy tutted and slapped his arm but he laughed. "You're rambling, girl, you know that?"

I pulled his hand towards me. "Maybe if you _listened_ to the ramblings, you might realise that I'm actually being quite prolific and beautiful!" I said loudly.

He smirked at me and I couldn't help the grin that was stretching across my face. "I'm listening to it but it doesn't make a word of sense to me."

"Not to you, yeah. You'd be lost in my head, GaGa, I'm telling you."

"I count my stars every day," he said grimly, pulling the shell that was tied around his neck with a rope of string out from underneath his shirt and touching it to his lips.

I sat up and leaned forwards to kiss his cheek.

"Annie, dear," said Grammy, as she gripped my hand with surprising force. She reached into her pocket and produced a string of beautiful, tiny pearls. I stared at the glossy white spheres as she unhooked the gold chain and fastened it neatly onto my wrist. "This was your mother's. And before that it was mine, and my mother's, and …"

I pressed my lips together. "Thanks, Grammy."

I walked them to the door and there were many hugs and muffled kisses and jerky words until finally the Peacekeepers were telling us that standing outside of the room instead of inside it didn't give us any more time to say goodbye.

So GaGa Moon simply looked at me and said, "We'll be seeing you in the dust." Then he winked and grabbed hold of Grammy's hand as she leaned herself against him. They turned and shuffled off down the corridor.

The Peacekeepers pushed me back into the room, and a few kids from school came in and I sat back down on the floor, resting my chin on my knees and hugging myself. I didn't really try to talk to them. I hardly noticed them, actually. All I was thinking about were the people I cared for most in the world. Grammy and GaGa. Lance. The list seemed unnervingly short. Something had to be missing, or else my little life was a lot sadder than I ever realised. Yes, that thing on my tongue, that must have been it. The missing something I couldn't quite place. I went to the window and pressed my forehead against the cool glass, closing my eyes and listening to the soothing sounds of the ocean. Of District 4. Of home.

Then suddenly I was out of the door, ignoring the goodbyes I was supposed to be saying to kids I hardly knew nor cared about, slipping past the Peacekeepers in a brief moment where they must have thought I was a visitor, not a tribute; which gave me enough time to make it to the end of the corridor and rush out into the main hall of the Justice Building. I was flapping down the stairs when I heard them following behind me, but the crowd standing in the atrium were my saviours.

"Hang on!" I yelled, catching their attention just before the Peacekeepers had grabbed my arms and held me back. Grammy and GaGa Moon were still there chatting with old Mags, and Finnick and Esmé were chatting quietly with them, too. They all turned and looked shocked and aghast at my appearance.

"Hey guys, let her go," said Finnick in annoyance, coming up and pushing the Peacekeepers back from me when they didn't. I caught my breath while watching him square up to a particularly large one with a walrus moustache. "She's not doing anything."

I didn't know why Finnick suddenly felt the desire to be a huge defender of the helpless, but for just a moment it almost made up for the rather more distasteful aspects of his being. Almost.

"Um … What was it you wanted, pet?" asked Esmé, looking rather upset at the whole scene.

I ignored her and looked at Grammy and GaGa. "I'm sorry, I don't think I can say goodbye again so I'm about to completely ignore your existence for a moment. And I apologise deeply for that." Grammy blinked in surprise but GaGa simply gave a tiny smirk, understanding me better than anyone else ever could. I shot him a wink and I got a wide, gummy smile in return. I took a deep breath and turned to Finnick. "I want to say goodbye to my parents."

There was an extended silence, and I wasn't sure why because only half the people in the room actually understood what that entailed. But when Esmé asked where my parents were – and what on Earth was their good excuse for missing the reaping – it was Finnick who explained. He told the story better than I did, actually.

"Is it at all possible? Even just two minutes," I pleaded. "The beach is right over there. The Peacekeepers can 'cuff me or whatever, I don't care."

I looked over at Finnick, who I felt had the most authority on this for some reason, and because I had personally told him about my parents and the mermaids and everything. He ran a hand through his hair and shrugged dismissively at Esmé, who had been shooting him pointed glares and pursing her lips.

And then a slow, rattling voice said, "Of course it's possible, little girl, even if I – I have to take you there myself!"

I smiled widely at Mags, as Finnick sighed. "Oh, don't be ridiculous, Mags. We'll be waiting all day if you take her." I turned to glare at him, as he met my eyes and crinkled up his brow with a serious frown. "I'll go."

I didn't know quite how to feel about this. I would have rather gone with Mags, who was good friends with Grammy Moon. But if this was the best I could get that I wasn't about to complain.

Just then, two Peacekeepers appeared at the top of the stairs, Lance following closely behind them. He saw me, and the rest of the small group, and asked what was going on.

When I told him I was allowed to say goodbye to my parents, he just paused and then said, "Better hurry up or we'll miss the train." Then he smiled and I grinned back.

Finnick had the Peacekeepers trail ten feet behind us as we walked across the beach towards the shore. There was complete silence between us. I figured that I didn't want to talk to him, and he didn't try to talk to me. That was surprising, but I appreciated it whether he intended it or not.

I got as far as the water, with a bunch of rocks to my right, near where they had found the little boat in pieces after the storm. One plank that still perfectly read T_he Crest of the Moon_ had identified the spot where my parents lost their human lives.

Suddenly I had no idea what I was doing. I let the tide slip gradually in and out over my feet, squinting out at the rocks and the mellow waves crashing over them. What had I expected to see? Two little fishy heads sticking out of the water, waving their fins at me? I felt totally ridiculous, and embarrassed, and I could see Finnick quietly observing me from a short distance so I instinctively knelt down and picked up a shell in my hand. It looked like a nautilus shell to me, as it had been cracked open and I could see the many chambers inside of it, growing smaller and smaller as they spiralled towards the centre. The nautilus lives in each of the chambers as it grows, and then as it outgrows each particular space it enlarges its shell by the addition of a new chamber.

Ever growing and expanding, and yet the shell was so small it fit neatly in the palm of my hand. I ran my thumb of the smooth underside of purest white, and flipped it over to hide the chambers and reveal the bright orange streaks that crossed the face of it.

I closed my eyes and brought the shell to my lips for a moment, then chucked it as far as I could into the water.

It wasn't an impressive throw. I watched it make a small splash in the calm water and then paused for a bit before turning around to Finnick. I expected him to scoff or groan at my weak throw, but instead I saw him bending to pick up his own shell from the sand, kissing it and throwing it a good distance into the water. It splashed right beside the rocks where the remains of the little boat were found.

I guessed he must have been showing off.

"I'll stay away from throwing in training," I told him.

He laughed.

I turned and began to walk away, and this seemed to be a bit abrupt on my part because he took a moment before jogging to catch up with me.

"You know, Annie Cresta, most girls would swoon at the chance to have a romantic stroll on the beach with me."

I smiled at him, recognising the way he was teasing me because it was just like the way Lance did, and didn't remind me of the way Finnick teased Esmé. So I just replied, "Well, Finnick Odair, my mind happens to be a little preoccupied at this moment in time."

"I bet it is," he said, smiling a clean white smile at me.

I twisted the pearls around my wrist. "Okay," I said, because I had lost what we were talking about. "Why did you offer to come with me?"

Finnick laughed again and eyed me closely. "I could hardly let Mags come out."

"Is that it?" He blinked at me. "Sorry. I'm asking too many questions."

"No," he said quickly. He seemed to think for a minute or two. "No, it's fine. You kind of remind me of someone I know, and I just wanted to help. I know this probably meant a lot to you."

I looked down as we walked. "May I ask who I remind you of?"

Finnick shoved his hands deep into his pockets and kicked at the sand. For a brief moment he looked up and our eyes met. "My dad."

I wrinkled my brow. Finnick Odair's father was bedridden with a sickness that left his memory befuddled and his antics random and … befuddled. This was feeling a little familiar. I felt like I should have thought it was weird for Finnick to associate me, a seventeen year old girl, with his demented and helpless father. And maybe it was strange, but somehow I felt I understood what he meant. Finnick was the oldest child of seven and was left with the task of caring for all his brothers and sister and his father because his mother died when he was young. So I guessed he was used to taking care of people who had nobody else. Which must have been how he saw me, too.

Finnick Odair; victor. Playboy. Defender of the helpless. Something about that wasn't quite right.

Finnick laughed at my expression and said, "No offence or anything, it's just the eccentricities."

I pursed my lips. "You think I'm eccentric?"

"In the … best possible way?" he said, still laughing.

"Finnick, can I tell you something?"

His eyes flicked from side to side and then rested back on my face with a frown. "Sure."

I stopped walking, letting the Peacekeepers overtake us as we crossed the dunes that spilled out onto the town square where a Capitol car was waiting for us.

I looked up at him, realising he was pretty tall. This was probably the first time I had ever spoken to him. Or seen him up close for that matter. Besides at the reaping when my tears had been mostly blocking my sight.

I looked over his face which was tanned and chiselled and very handsome. "I rather dislike you," I said.

He blinked and stepped back a bit. "What – because I said you were eccentric?"

"No." I shrugged briefly. "Just in general."

His eyes came to a stop somewhere a few inches to the left of my head. "Well, that's okay. I rather dislike me, too."

I tried to study his expression, but I couldn't. "Is that a joke?"

He met my gaze. "You know, I'm not actually sure."

I averted my eyes and looked instead at his shoulder. "You're odd."

"_I'm_ odd?" he asked.

"Yeah."

He narrowed his eyes. "Well, you're eccentric."

"Yeah, you mentioned that already."

Just then Esmé's voice rang out across the square, and when I turned I saw two cameras. One was trained on Lance and the others piling into the car and the other on me and Finnick.

"Coo-eee! Finnick, darling, we've got that train to catch!"

Finnick gave a shudder and then directed me into the car, where I sat beside Lance and took his hand.

I turned around and knelt on the seat to watch the beach through the back window as it grew smaller and smaller and smaller in the distance. Or, maybe I was looking at it the wrong way, and it was simply that my new chamber was growing ever bigger in front of me. The Capitol. The Games. The future. Maybe I was simply a big fish in a small pond, and now I was getting out into the ocean where I belonged. I was the nautilus in need of a bigger shell.

Unfortunately, I was not a fish or a nautilus. I was not heading towards a bigger pond, or a bigger shell, or a bigger horizon.

I was heading to my death.

* * *

AN:

OH THE METAPHORS! :) lol

Right, so I didn't want to over-do the Finnick thing too soon in the story … But I may have failed at that because I love him so much. Tell me if he's OOC, tell me if it's too much too soon or if he's showing too much interest in Annie so far, really. Tell me anything you want, actually! And I'll just add, that if you do give a criticism, please make it as constructive as you can. I mean, I don't mind you telling me it's awful, as long as you tell me what's so bad about it! Then I can do my best to fix it, but otherwise I'm a bit stuck! :) Or even just simple encouraging comments are helpful too ;) So don't hesitate to keep the reviews coming, I'm dying to hear more from you all. Thanks to everyone who has done so thus far! xD


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

I sat down on the bed in my temporary room on the train. My goodbyes had been said. I was leaving the ones I loved behind. It was all over. So at that moment, I finally turned my mind to the last person I cared about; the one I had kept out of my head up until now, the one who deserved my full attention, and the one who wasn't being left behind at all.

Lance.

There's so much I could say, but the truth of it was that both of us couldn't win this thing. And I couldn't kill Lance – gosh, I don't think I could kill _anyone_.

But … could _he_?

Could Lance win?

"Right, let's see our brand new tributes!" called Finnick, as Lance and I entered the dining cart. He clapped his hands together. "How hungry are we?"

I was busy eyeing up a giant chicken dripping in gravy on the table. My mouth was beginning to water. "I'm a teeny bit peckish," I said.

"Well, dinner starts as soon as I've checked the two of you out. Now stand over there."

Lance and I shot each other wary glances before standing side by side at the other end of the room, our eyes flicking back to the food every once in a while.

Finnick began circling us like a predator, poking and prodding our muscles (or lack thereof) and muttering things like, "Chins up!" and "Shoulders straight!" Eventually he stopped in front of me, crossed his arms and scanned me up and down. "What's with the stringy arms?" He lifted one of my arms in the air and then let it fall. It flopped back to my side like a dead fish. "Your grandparents run the gift shop on the beach, right? Don't you ever swim? Fish? Get any sort of exercise?"

I swallowed and looked at my feet. "I can swim a bit, but I suffer from aquaphobia."

I looked up into Finnick's eyes and he let his mouth hang open as he stared at me. "Please tell me you're joking." I didn't speak or move, finding it difficult to hold his fierce glare. He grit his teeth, looking like he was biting back a lot of stuff he wanted to say, and rubbed his temples instead. "So, anything you _can_ do? Spear a fish? Use a net? … Knots?"

"… I'm extremely good at stringing necklaces out of shell chips and fish bones."

"That's not helpful in any way whatsoever," he replied crisply. "Any hidden abilities or weapon skills? Anything at all?"

I genuinely thought for a minute. "Nope," I said. Finnick continued to glare. "I expect I'll be pretty adept at dying, though."

He paused, and for a moment his lips twisted into the smallest of smiles. Then he shook his head hastily. "Oh, you're funny, that's just fantastic. I can't work like this. Esmé, why don't you get yourself a drink? And, you know what, you might as well get me one while you're at it. You," he said, pointing accusingly at Lance, "_please_ tell me you can do something. Anything. Make me happy." He held his arms out from his side and closed his eyes.

"Um, I …" stammered Lance, shooting me a quick, worried look. "I'm not bad with a spear. I can use some traps, nets and stuff. I know a fair few knots from being out on the boats."

"You fish a lot?" asked Finnick, opening one eye and visibly becoming a little calmer.

Lance nodded fervently.

Finnick was quiet for a moment. Then he took a step towards Lance, straightening his shoulders and looking down on him as if comparing their bodies. "Not a bad build, either. You're strong?"

"I'm all right," said Lance, not backing away but narrowing his eyes as he looked into Finnick's face. Lance was certainly smaller and less muscular than our mentor, and even just seeing them standing there together was strange. It was pretty hard to believe that there was only a year between them in age.

"No time for modesty," said Finnick as he stepped away and had a glass handed to him by Esmé.

"Annie's fast," Lance blurted out quickly. "She's the best runner in our year at school."

Finnick glared at Lance for a moment with a certain look I didn't quite understand until he said, "Can't Annie speak for herself?"

Lance blinked. "I was just saying."

"Yeah, sorry Finnick, I forgot about that," I put in.

Finnick didn't look at me when I spoke but just sat on the edge of an end table and took a sip from his drink. "Look, you two, I'm your mentor so I'm here to help you win this thing as best I can. You've got to work with me, whether you like it or not."

For some reason I felt that the last comment was directed at me, since I told him I disliked him. But I hadn't meant it like that. The rather more hate-worthy aspects of Finnick's personality had nothing to do with me and Lance and the Games. Unless it was him sleeping with the richest folk to get us sponsors or something, which was how I guessed he operated anyway.

Finnick examined the bottom of his glass and then his eyes flicked up to meet mine. "Well, if I've heard all you've got to offer, then I'll start assessing each of your potential strategies."

"We'll be allies, we already know that," said Lance. When Finnick did nothing but look blankly at him, Lance stepped forwards and glared at him.

Finnick stood and for a moment they stared each other down. "I'm the mentor here, Lancey. So you'll do what I think is best. And right now, you'd wanna be on my good side while I'm assessing you." Lance faltered and broke the eye contact. Finnick gave a tight-lipped smile. "In the meantime, dinner's waiting."

Needless to say, dinner was a little bit awkward. And when I say a little bit awkward I mean _incredibly_ awkward. Even _I_ could tell it was awkward. That just shows how incredibly awkward it was.

Only Esmé really tried to talk, the rest of us sat in silence. I was completely fine with that, because the food was flipping fantastic.

"So, Annie, darling," said Esmé over dessert, flicking her odd feathery eyelashes at me. "How do you manage in District 4, being afraid of the water and everything?"

"I'm more afraid of the drowning, to be honest."

"And why's that?" she prodded. "Because your parents died in the water?"

Everybody went still. Lance froze with his fork halfway to his mouth and his eyes flicked between me and Esmé. Finnick slowly bit a chunk of chocolate cake and then placed his fork carefully back on his place.

I gave a laugh. "My parents aren't _dead_. My parents are fish."

Esmé raised her hand to her mouth and smirked behind it. "Oh, _right_, of course. How silly of me!" Then she rolled her eyes and looked over at Finnick, whose expression had turned very sour. He didn't look at her but met my eyes briefly across the table.

I looked down at my hands, my brow furrowing.

"So then why are you afraid of the water, if you think the – aha – the _mermaids_ are always there to save you if anything bad happens?" she was asking.

I could feel my face growing warm, and I just couldn't seem to think of a suitable answer. Just when I was feeling completely idiotic, Lance said, "Because mermaids can only save your life once. Everybody knows that." Our eyes met and I exhaled in relief. "Plus, you're old enough now that you might get turned into a bass if you see a mermaid."

"Oh, yes," agreed Esmé, suddenly taking on a slow, emotive voice. "Annie's a very big girl now, aren't you sweetie?"

I stared at her. "Why are talking to me like I'm a three year old?"

Again, everyone froze. Between Lance and Finnick having a glaring match before dinner and now me and Esmé having this tiff, it felt like we were all getting off on the wrong foot today. Finnick suddenly began choking on his wine and had to duck his head under the table to control himself. I looked at Lance beside me, who pressed his lips together, clearly trying not to laugh.

I looked at Esmé and found myself with the same problem. A sickly smile was still painted on her face but it was false and forced and it seemed like it was physically hurting her. When Finnick emerged from his napkin, she swept the pained expression from her face and shook her head as if throwing off what I had said, because then she simply ignored my question. "You two are soooooo _cute!_" she said, waving her creepy clawed fingers between me and Lance. "Did you know?"

Lance and I exchanged a grimace.

And then I said, "I bet we'll look even more adorable when one of us is trying to kill the other."

Finnick snorted on his wine again and Lance actually laughed out loud.

"Now, Annie, that's hardly something to joke about!" wailed Esmé, holding her hand over her chest. "It's very insensitive – think about how Lance might feel about you saying something like that!"

"I feel like we could appreciate someone lightening the mood, actually," Lance laughed.

"Look, you two," said Esmé firmly, and I noticed it was the second 'Look, you two' speech we had gotten today. She straightened her back in her chair and reached across the table to us. "I know you must be very upset about getting reaped along with your best friend – but you've got to see the positive side of the situation! Just think – having someone you know and love with you through all of this; it's more than any of the other children could wish for! And the Capitol is such a fabulous place, you're both going to love it! And you get to share this new experience with each other! You'll have buckets of fun – at the parade, training, the interviews! It'll be just like a big fancy holiday!"

There was silence for a moment, and then Lance said, "Yeah, until we have to kill each other."

Esmé absolutely glared at him, then retracted her hands and pursed her lips. "Now, that's quite enough negative energy at this table, thank you very much."

I found myself on my feet, knocking my knife to the floor with a clatter by accident. My napkin fell, too. "You are such an ignorant little idiot, Esmé!"

Again with the frozen silences. This time Esmé blinked furiously at me and everyone else just sort of stared with their mouths hanging agape.

I gave a short laugh. "I'm sorry, I'm just a little bundle of _negative energy_ right now. And that's not allowed at this table, so you'll have to excuse me. I'll just go cry myself to sleep at the thoughts of my probable imminent death, or that of my best friend in the entire world. Or both. But the fact that I get a free holiday thrown in actually makes me feel a lot better. Thanks a bunch, Esmé."

And then I turned around and strode out of the room.

At the door I heard Finnick say, "Does she even realise how hilarious she is?"

Lance replied, "Oh, she knows."

I stopped in my tracks and poked my head back in the dining room door. "If you're going to talk about me when I'm gone, I request that only nice things are said. Okay, thanks." And then I remade my exit.

I was almost at my bedroom when I heard the footsteps behind me and, presuming it was Lance, I turned around.

It wasn't Lance.

Finnick was wearing a wide, slightly crooked smile as he reached me and leaned against the door-frame of my room, folding his arms across his chest and forcing me to pay attention to him. I was worried I'd be in trouble for blowing up at Esmé, but then I wondered why he'd be smiling so much if he was here to tell me off.

He just kept smiling at me, and his eyes ran up and down my body like they had done during his assessment and I suddenly felt very uncomfortable and shifted on my feet.

He uncrossed his arms, still grinning. "So, that must have been the sanest thing I've heard all day."

He stood very close, and I don't know why, but suddenly my heart was fluttering a little. I took a measured step back from him to avoid the intense eye contact he had going on but it didn't work because then I could just see more of him. Him and his stupid good looks. His stupid annoying sleazy good looks which I was clearly not attracted to. Not in any way whatsoever.

"Well, yeah, you know," I said quickly. "You might as well be kind and say bad things to people's faces, and then only say good things about them behind their backs."

Finnick touched his hair, flicking a short piece from his forehead. His eyes narrowed slightly. "Oh, well yeah. That too. But I was actually talking about what you said to Esmé." He smirked a little.

"Oh, right," I said stupidly. "Well, I was just being honest."

"Well, if _I'm_ being honest, I can't stand that woman," he whispered rather loudly, leaning forwards again. He met my eyes. "I've been dying for someone to stand up to her for ages."

I took another step back. I had a feeling Finnick didn't realise how uncomfortable he was making me. This was just the way he acted, and I just wasn't used to people being all up close and – you know – _good looking_ and stuff.

"Finnick, I'm sorry, but you're kind of invading my bubble right now."

Finnick drew back. "Your bubble?"

I took a few breaths and said, "Yeah, I've got a personal bubble, just about four feet radius, you know. It's fine, really, it's just …"

He held up his hands. "No, sorry." He stepped back a bit. "How's this?"

"That'd be fine," I sighed.

"Okay," he said, widening his eyes at me.

"Don't you think I should I go apologise to Esmé?" I asked.

"Uh, well I guess she is your escort …" he started unenthusiastically, putting his hands in his pockets and leaning his shoulder against the wall. He gave a great sigh. "But if she's too pissed off to do her job she might get fired, and though I'd be _extremely_ upset with that happening, it's you that actually needs her here." He chewed his lip for a moment, then his eyes flicked to meet mine. He smiled a little. "You know what, I'll talk to her for you."

"Tell her I have a mental instability or something," I said. He looked at me. I shrugged. "I mean, it might as well be true. Or so I've heard."

Finnick watched me for a moment. "You seem … pretty sane."

"I am completely sane." He nodded at me, his face slipping back into a grin. "I've got prions in my brain," I told him.

"You … What are prions?"

"Oh, they're these evil mutants that infect your cells and kill you," I said. Finnick stared at me. I wet my lips. "I don't really. I'm just thinking of what to tell Esmé so she thinks I'm crazy."

Finnick let out a relieved breath and then laughed loudly. "Well, I doubt she'll have any trouble believing it."

I smiled a little. "I am sane, you know. I've just got this, um," I clicked my fingers for a moment, "attention problem and social, uh … difficulties. So I've heard, anyway."

"I hadn't noticed," he said, smirking a little.

I frowned. "Is that sarcasm or are you humouring me?"

"Sarcasm, actually," he said, raising his eyebrows slightly.

"Oh, okay, good," I said, and he laughed a little. "Lance had to teach me sarcasm. Now he says I overuse it. And he says I don't get the tone right either, so it's kinda confusing."

"Kinda," agreed Finnick. He grinned very widely at me, crossing his arms again. "Okay … Well, don't cry yourself to sleep now. Unless you have to, I mean."

"Oh, I was just joking. That was a joke. Like, sarcasm," I said hastily.

He nodded, and for a moment he invaded the personal bubble again by leaning towards me and scanning my face with his eyes. "I know," he whispered. His eyes flashed with amusement. I didn't say anything for a moment and then he laughed and said, "You do realise that you have to come back in and watch the reaping, right?"

I groaned loudly. "Do I have to?"

"Do you want to win this thing?" he asked. When I didn't answer he wet his lips and said, "'Yes, Finnick! Yes I do!'" Finnick threw his arms around my shoulder and dragged me in the direction of the dining room. "Oh, right, the bubble. Sorry." He let me go, but then he stopped again in front of the door, blocking my way. "And by the way … about what I said earlier. I'm sorry if I came down a little hard on you. Half the kids in there won't know how to use a weapon either. That's what training is for. So, you never know – maybe you'll be a natural at shooting or blowing darts or something."

I met his eyes, wondering when I should tell him that I wasn't planning on winning the Games. Or _if_ I should tell him at all. But then it hit me that I might still need to use a weapon if I wanted to help Lance get out of there alive. So I simply said, "You never know."

Finnick narrowed his eyes for a second but then flashed a wide smile, and we walked back in to join the others around a large screen.

I sat beside Lance on a sofa upholstered in a bright green and orange floral pattern. I knew I should have been paying attention to the reaping but it was hard. Only a few stuck out in my mind, and not for the right reasons. It was Finnick who pointed out the pair from District 2, both huge and beefy and looking fairly confident; a stocky boy from 7 whose muscles appeared to be bursting out of his shirt; and the girl from 12 who snivelled and kept wiping her eyes after her name was called.

"She's faking it," said Finnick.

"How do you know?" asked Lance.

He turned in his armchair to look at us. "Compare that girl to Annie here when she started crying on the stage." When we were silent for a moment Finnick gave a loud sigh. "It was when _your_ name was called that she started to cry, Lancey, not her own. And this girl from 12, at her age she's too old to be crying for herself. She's pretending to be weak."

I could feel Lance's eyes on me but I didn't meet them. The boy from 12 was then called, and he looked like he couldn't have been more than ten years old. You could see him trembling. These were the ones I found myself noticing. The boy with glasses from 5 who tripped on his way up to the stage. The girl from 8 who had to be torn from a weeping gaggle of her friends by the Peacekeepers. Both from 9 who looked like they had never been fed in their lives. And the boy from District 1, who was tall and had soft blonde hair swept over one eye and a rather dazzling smile. I wondered if he'd play the Finnick Odair card and use his looks to get the best and most exuberant sponsors. When I offered this query to Finnick he just laughed and said, "Don't get carried away now. He's not _that_ handsome." Which made me want to both hate Finnick's arrogance and laugh at it at the same time. Which made me rather confused.

Later that night there was a soft knock on my door, and I opened it to see Lance standing there in a deep blue robe, his sandy hair sticking up in different directions.

"Hey," he said.

"Hi."

We looked at each other for a moment, and then we practically flung ourselves into each other's arms. Lance was one of the few people I would let into my bubble.

"Hardly got to talk to you all day," he said, his voice muffled as he spoke into my hair. He drew back from the hug and took my arms to look properly into my face. "How's it going?"

"Not bad," I said. "Considering. You?"

"Not bad … considering."

I let go of him, because I had to restrict the bubble when there was eye contact. He glanced nervously at the door and I went and quietly shut it.

We sat down on the bed, and I played with the corner of the quilt. For a while we spoke only in sighs and exchanges of worried expressions.

He put his hands over his face and fell back onto the bed. "Oh, what the hell are we gonna do?"

"We're gonna wait 'til Finnick finishes his assessment and decides which one of us has got the better chance of winning," I said reasonably. "And whichever one he picks, the other will do whatever she – or he – can to keep him – or her – alive."

Lance instantly sat up again, eyes popping out of his head. "No way. Absolutely not. Annie – maybe he thinks you're funny and all, but you know he'll pick me. You have to know that."

"I do," I said calmly. "And I know I'm a bit useless, Lance, but I'm gonna do whatever I can to help you in that arena. Even if that means not teaming up with you-"

"What are you talking about? We're not leaving each other!"

"But what if I'm just slowing you down in there? If Finnick doesn't think we should stick together-"

Lance shook his head and raised his arms questioningly. "I don't care what Finnick thinks. Are you seriously gonna listen to him if he says we can't be allies?"

I sighed. "He's our mentor, Lance! And he's won this thing before. He's our best shot. _Your_ best shot."

Lance pressed his lips together. "No, Annie, he can be _your_ best shot. Because I'll be protecting you with my life in there."

I covered my face with my hands. "Lance, don't."

I felt the bed move and heard him stand up. "I'm not discussing this," he said.

The next thing I knew was the door slamming.

* * *

AN: Hey peeps! So the thing is, I've got exams coming up pretty soon, so I gotta ban myself from fanfic for the next couple weeks. But if you give a review, I'll be sure to fill my study breaks with writing the next chapter for this, and I promise to try update as soon as I possibly can! :D So I hope you continue to enjoy the story and whatnot, and please review!

Thanks for reading! ;)


	5. Chapter 5

Got a comment, wondering why Finnick was real nice and tolerant until he began assessing the tributes, and then suddenly he was kinda mean and stuff? And to be honest I hardly even thought about it when I was writing it. I just presumed he'd get a little bit cockier once he had to start being a mentor. And then I realised why: because, well, I don't think anyone would really enjoy being a mentor, would they? So he kinda puts on that toughness just so he can actually _do_ it. And he's so young, as well. Because Lance especially is only a year younger than him. And Finnick might have felt the need to be bossy basically just to make himself _feel_ like the boss. Know what I mean? Anyways, I hope that answers your question, MDesign! Though if anyone feels like he wouldn't act like that then feel free to say so. Keep those reviews coming! I love you all xD

On with the story!

**Chapter 5**

After a fairly fragmented and tormented night's sleep, I woke up screaming and ran into the dining car where Lance, Esmé and Finnick were already gathered. The three of them dropped what they were doing and stared at me like I had just broken out of a mental institution. For a moment I forgot what had freaked me out so much. But then Finnick opened his mouth and I instantly began screaming again.

"LANCE GET AWAY FROM HIM!"

Whatever had been coming out of Finnick's mouth was replaced by a, "What the-?"

He sounded confused but I knew it was all a ruse. It had to be. And I had to protect Lance from him; that sneaky, sleazy, despicable Finnick Odair!

I grabbed Lance up and dragged him away from the breakfast table.

"Annie, what-?"

"What are you even doing with him?" I yelled, shaking Lance and pulling him across the room. "HE'S TRYING TO KILL US!"

"Oh, no. What have I done this time?" yawned Finnick as he began buttering a scone. I was panting from my fear and adrenaline but then I took a moment to actually look at him, sitting there looking a little tired but mostly just calm and not very murderous at all. This seemed so weird, because just a moment ago he had been chasing us down a strip of sand, and Lance had been screaming at me to stay safe and now they were all having a nice friendly breakfast together …

I looked at Lance, who had sleep in his golden brown eyes. He'd had a bloody gash across his throat the last time I had seen him, which only felt like moments ago.

I clutched at his arm. "He's trying to get us – Lance, what's going on?"

"It's okay, Annie, you must have been dreaming," he replied, rubbing his eyes sleepily.

"No, I wasn't," I argued, but I felt unsure now. The memory of Finnick chasing us on the beach was slowly becoming foggier in my head. Was it in my head?

I watched Finnick warily, trying to remember if the last time I spoke to him was pleading for my life in a sandy Hunger Games arena. He finished chewing his scone and then spoke up. "Okay, where exactly were we when I was trying to kill you?"

"In the arena," I said. "On the beach. You chased us with a trident."

"You're not in the arena yet," he said rationally. "I was with you on the beach yesterday but now we're on the train. We're actually in the Capitol now, we arrived during the night. And I won't even be there in the arena with you. Still think you weren't dreaming?"

He raised his eyebrows at me and I paused and then shook my head a little sheepishly. "Sorry," I said to him.

"Not a problem," he said, flashing a smile.

I looked down and realised I was in my pyjamas and bare feet. My face grew hot. "Sorry!" I repeated, glancing at Lance and Esmé with a nervous laugh. As I rushed to the door I was hit with a need to say something, so I turned around and said, "That was impressively well-handled, Finnick."

"You're not the only one with bad dreams," he told the apple in his hand.

He missed the slight smile I gave, so I just said, "Thanks," and then fled the room.

I sat down on my bed and did a couple of breathing exercises, and then attempted to laugh it off as I got changed. This happened pretty often (Lance knew all about it from numerous occasions I stopped speaking to him over something that happened in a dream) but for some reason it was so much more embarrassing this time. Was it just the fact that I made a fool of myself in front of two people I hardly knew? But sure, one of them was Esmé. I didn't really care what she thought. That just left Finnick. But I didn't even like Finnick.

And there was something weird about how easily he had calmed me down when even Lance couldn't. How was he so understanding? Come to think of it, I had been getting on reasonably well with Finnick so far. He hadn't got annoyed with me for being eccentric, or for being too honest, or for any of the odd things I do. It hit me that I didn't really even dislike him all that much any more.

I shook myself. Why was I thinking about Finnick Odair? That was funny.

I got dressed into a white blouse and little blue skirt that was the least garish thing I could find in the closet. I left the front of my hair in the plait but took out the green ribbon and tied it around the pearl bracelet so that I could sneak it into the Training Centre and maybe the Games. I took a moment to be impressed at my own intelligence there, then went back out and faced the others.

"Good news, I've finished your evaluations!"

Lance and I stopped eating and looked expectantly at Finnick, who was absorbed in the task of spooning sugar into his tea.

"… And?" pushed Lance.

Finnick dropped his cup and pointed at Lance. "Too impatient. Kinda gets on my nerves. Needs to respect his authorities." Lance's face had contorted defensively and he was about to retort when Finnick waved his hand in my direction and continued loudly, "And this one … well, I dunno. Odd. But mostly …" He looked thoughtful for a moment. "_Harmless_."

Finnick smiled at me, as if he was very pleased with himself.

"Mostly harmless?" I repeated blankly.

"I though you were assessing our chances in the arena. Not our personalities," said Lance.

Finnick rolled his eyes. "Patience, Lancey-Pants, I was getting to that part."

Again he didn't say anything for a moment, and I could tell from Lance's face that he was trying his very best not to interrupt.

Finnick wrinkled his brow and studied us. "Neither of you are exactly Careers …"

"Why should we be?"

"Well, the other districts tend to see 4 as a Career district-"

"But we're not!" said Lance. "We don't-"

"Train, I know," sighed Finnick. "We just happen to learn skills that come in handy in the arena. Now can I please get back to my assessment?"

Lance and I nodded.

He turned his head in Lance's direction but didn't actually look at him. "You're as good as I could hope for." Then he looked at me. "And you … Oh, damn, I just don't know. Odd but mostly harmless."

"Well, that was helpful," I said.

"Sorry, okay, you're still under assessment," laughed Finnick. "We'll see how you do in training, okay?"

I nodded, but knew inside that training wasn't going to change anything. I was exactly that: harmless. And the 'mostly' part was an understatement. I was _completely_ harmless.

"Now that that's over," he continued, "I get to start with the mentoring!"

"Really? Oh but Finnick, you've done so much already!" I said.

Finnick pursed his lips and glared at me. "Hurtful sarcasm, yes, but still mostly harmless." I scowled a little. "_Anyway_," he went on, "you're heading into the prep teams now, and they're gonna primp and tear and do really awful things to your bodies 'til you come out pink and tender and hairless and kind of emotionally scarred. And that's when you get handed over to the lovely stylists."

"I can hardly wait," muttered Lance.

Esmé tutted a little but Finnick only grinned. "You can get away with that negativity stuff here, but for the prep teams and stylists I want you to be the most charming kids on Earth. That might be difficult for some of you," he said, glaring pointedly at Lance, "but at least shut up and let them do anything they want to you."

"Fine, no whining," I said. How hard could it be, really?

"Good!" said Finnick, grinning widely. "As for the stylists … Okay, they aren't the worst in the world. But these are the same people who had yours truly dressed with only a single shell covering his dignity at the age of fourteen." He held back a shudder and rubbed his temples. "I can't even imagine what fun they'll have with the pair of you two."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

He stood up, contemplated me for a moment, then said, "I'll let you figure it out for yourself. Now, I've got some people to meet, so … Yeah." He bit back another grimace and then strolled out of the room.

"Who d'you suppose he's meeting?" Lance asked as we got off the train and were bombarded by cameras on the platform. Esmé led our way, ushering us past film crews and interviewers.

"Dunno, but I bet he'll be turning a profit from the visit," I replied. "What d'you suppose he meant, that the stylists will have fun with the pair of us?"

Lance turned and met my eyes. "That we're young and pretty little things, but still old enough to be considered legal. So basically we're gonna be naked for the ceremony."

I groaned. "I'll gauge your eyes out if you gauge out mine."

* * *

"Hell-oooo, Annie!" my stylist greeted me. The man had clear peachy skin and white blonde hair shaved on either side and slicked up into a quiff on the top of his head. He had four loopy piercings in one eyebrow and a huge hole in his earlobe that I could have stuck my finger through. He wore a tight white shirt buttoned all the way up to his throat and tucked into tartan pants that stopped halfway down his calves, revealing his socks under brown ankle boots with pointed toes. "My name's Holden Rye. My job – to make _you_ look _fabulous_! Not that you don't already look fabulous – but, well, you don't. Actually."

I actually started to laugh, and he shrieked along with me, congratulating me on a wonderful sense of humour. He linked his arm through mine and dragged me into a room where they served us lunch.

Holden crossed one ankle over his knee, and laced his fingers together. I noticed his lips were as pale as the rest of his skin, as he scanned me for a moment.

"Darling," he said suddenly. "Absolutely precious." I bit into a bunch of frozen grapes and looked from side to side in confusion. He uncrossed his legs and aligned the points of his shoes, placing his hands delicately on his knees. "Your dress at the reaping. Très adorable. And can I just say," he leaned forwards and widened his eyes, "when you started crying? And Lance said you were best friends? TEARS! Tears in my actual eyes!" He wiped a non-existent one from his face and then gave a quick sigh and grabbed a piece of melon from our lunch tray.

"Um, thank you," I said uncertainly.

"Now!" he exclaimed. "Tell me about yourself!"

"Um … huh?"

"Tell me, like, your life story," he explained, but I was still completely at a loss. What was my life story? It had to be pretty boring. What would someone like this even want to hear? I thought about Esmé, because he was sort of reminding me of her a bit, and the way she seemed to find the whole best friends being reaped together thing very exciting. I decided to try appealing to the Capitol need for romance and tragedy and drama.

So I told him the story of how I first met Lance, because that could apply to all three if I managed to tell it right.

I was five years old and it was a beautiful summer's day. I was wearing a cream-coloured dress with blue trimmings and brown sandals that always filled with sand when I walked on the beach. And my hair was in pigtails with blue ribbons. I was sitting on an upturned box in Grammy and GaGa's shop with a bucket of tiny shells because I was threading them into bracelets along with beads and little plastic sea creatures.

A little boy walked into the shop holding his mother's hand. I was concentrating on my job so I didn't look up at them. But I did notice that he had messy blonde hair that stuck out around his ears and huge golden brown eyes and cute chubby cheeks. And he was wearing tan shorts and a white shirt that had a juice stain on it.

I heard the boy leave his mother and come right up to me.

"Whatcha doing?" the boy asked.

"Making a bracelet," I said, holding it up so that he could see. (Don't worry, I made sure to pinch the ends so that it didn't all unravel.)

"Can you make me one?" the boy asked.

"Okay," I said. "But it'll cost ya fifty cents."

"Okay," he said, and then ran off to his mother.

After a minute or two I finished the bracelet and completely forgot about the boy, so I went outside and started picking daisies for a daisy chain to wear to the reaping that day.

I looked up when the bell at the door of the shop tinkled. I saw the boy again as he went walking off down the street, holding his mother's hand. He turned around and stared at me as he walked away and I stared back at him.

The next day I was back sitting on the box in the shop, but I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and my hair wasn't done all pretty. I was preoccupied making another bracelet when the boy entered the shop on his own this time and came right up to me.

He didn't say anything so I looked up, and saw that he was holding out a bunch of daisies. I looked at the daisies and then at his face which was bright red, and then the boy said,

"Do you want to be my _girlfriend_?"

I didn't say anything for a moment, because I didn't know what to say. Then I said, "I don't know."

"Okay," said the boy. "We can just be friends until you do know. My name is Lancelet Coquille. What's yours?"

"Annie Cresta," I said.

"Okay, Annie Cresta. I don't have fifty cents so can you make me a bracelet out of these instead?"

I took the daisies from him and made him a bracelet out of them (and a necklace too because he had picked a lot of them) and then Lance said,

"If I pick shells for you will you make me a bracelet out of those, too?"

And that's how I ended up leaving the shop and scouring the beach for shells with Lance for the very first time. And at the end of the day, I took out the bracelet I had made the day before and tied it around his wrist. And he gave me a kiss on the cheek in return and then immediately turned red and ran home.

And that's the story of how Lance and I first met.

(Though I left out the part where I was calling him Lancelot for weeks before he corrected me. So I just said Lance from then on.)

Holden was holding his hand over his lips the way Esmé did when she was snickering. But he wasn't snickering, he was just staring at me with very round eyes and a look of pure shock on his face.

"No my gosh," he said, "That was actually the most adorable thing I've ever heard in my actual life."

I couldn't help grinning a little. I hadn't thought about that for years. And then Holden began wailing about how tragic and romantic and _tragic_ it was now that destiny had brought us best friends together to our deaths. "I mean, at least one of your deaths. Probably both, but definitely at least one."

I remembered what Finnick said about being polite to the stylists, so I held my tongue. Then I realised he had used the word charming, so I said, "I'm totally devastated."

That's when I realised I had no idea how to be charming. But Holden didn't seem to care, he just screeched and said, "And didn't he ever ask you out again?"

The question surprised me, because it never occurred to me before. "No," I said. "I think he got to know me and realised I'm not really girlfriend material." Especially not when I was five years old.

"Nonsense," said Holden sternly. Then he gasped so suddenly that I almost jumped right out of my chair. "No my gosh, this is so exciting! Young lovers – in the arena – I almost wish that at least one of you doesn't have to die!"

"I almost wish that, too," I said, refraining from rolling my eyes.

Afterwards he wanted to hear more about my life so I told him the story of my parents, trying my best to tell it well the way Finnick had done. But I was really awful at telling stories. Lance was always telling me that, because I'd focus too much on minor details and completely miss the point at the end. But Holden was completely enthralled by my stories. Afterwards, he rubbed his chin in silence for a long time and then said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa – hang on just a gosh darn minute there. There are actual real-life mermaids in District 4?"

"Well, yeah," I said. "They're everywhere you find salt water. Didn't you know that?"

"NO!" he exclaimed, holding his hands to his face. Apparently, this was devastating news. "I absolutely _need_ to pay a visit to the beach next time I'm in District 4!"

"Hopefully that'll be pretty soon," I said sweetly. "On Lance's Victory Tour after he wins the Games. Or mine," I added as an afterthought, remembering not to reveal my secret plan for saving Lance instead of myself.

This practically killed Holden. I decided not to burst his bubble by telling him he could never see the merpeople in District 4. Unless he wanted to be turned into a sea bass, that is.

He was still super excited when I had to return to the hands of the Remake Centre to get my hair done. "You are simply going to _adore _your costume!" he squealed, before rushing off to get the last few bits ready.

My prep team were back, with careful instructions from Holden for my hair and make-up. And a few hours later I was looking at myself in a full length mirror, and seeing someone who looked nothing like me at all.

The only resemblance I could see was my hair. It was almost like I had worn it at the reaping, except instead of my natural waves there were perfect loose curls falling all the way down my back, the brown locks interspersed with colourful threads and ribbons in a rainbow of shades, with shells and beads and all sorts of glittering jewels strung around the ends. My bangs were braided back in the fish-bone plait and clipped in place with a little golden tiara. I had started getting confused when they began adding what looked like chunks of seaweed into my hair, but when the costume came along it all made sense. The girl in the mirror – or should I say young woman – had pieces of hair hanging over each shoulder which reached passed the two large shells that hid her breasts. From my ribs the sparkling sequins began scattering the golden glowing skin of my stomach, and at my belly button they began to thicken and fuse together with the skirt which was thick and glittering with them in gold and orange and hundreds of shades of shimmering greens and blues, making them look just like the scales of some crazy and wonderful fish. The fully sequined skirt widened unnaturally at my hips and then curved all the way to my ankles where it tucked in and then fanned out over my feet in a thickly pleated shiny material, leading behind me in a long train. Just like a tail-fin.

"I'm a mermaid," I whispered.

"Don't you just _love_ it!" yelled Holden, skirting around and fixing my hair into each strand's most perfect position. "Can you even _believe_ it? What a coincidence about your parents, too! Oh, if they could see you now, Annie …"

As he went on about how perfect my figure was for this dress ("Slim – but not scrawny – and yet still curvy enough to fill the bikini …") I stared at my face which had more gold, green and blue sequins surrounding my eyes and glitter caking my lips.

I felt a bit like I was going to served for dinner.

I needed help just to get to the elevator because the skirt was so tight around my ankles that I could hardly walk. Holden was bobbing on the balls of his boots as we descended to the bottom level of the Remake Centre. Just when I was beginning to worry that I hadn't seen Lance for a while, Holden said, "Lance is going to _love_ your outfit."

If he loved it as much as I did, that really wasn't saying much.

Holden stuck around just long enough to see Lance's jaw drop to the floor before he went screaming with excitement and prancing away with Lance's stylist, Sheaney, who seemed a lot more classy and subdued.

Once the stylists were out of earshot, Lance swore loudly and raked my body with his eyes. "Annie … what the hell did they do to you?"

"What did they do to _you_?" I retorted, staring at a shirtless Lance with shimmering golden skin and a merperson skirt identical to mine, his messy blonde hair in neat loose curls and strung out with bits of seaweed and netting. I leaned my face closer to his bare chest and squinted. "Did they actually put make-up on your abs?"

"'Just a bit of highlighting'," he sneered in a high-pitched Capitol accent, swatting me away. His eyes ran over my body with a deep scowl. "You look like …" He couldn't continue so just began to swear some more.

"Well, I happen to think I look positively _precious_, Lancey." Then a thought burst in my head and I pushed him angrily. "And I cannot believe you never told me!"

Lance rubbed his arm. "Told you what?"

I gestured to him. "Uh, I dunno, that you're a flipping merman!"

He smiled and shook his head. "Annie, I'm not. I'm wearing a stupid costume and so are you, right? You can see the freaking zip."

I hit myself in the head, accidentally dislodging a few sequins. "Right. I knew that, I knew that."

His eyes still didn't leave my outfit. "This is even worse than I expected."

"You expected us to be naked! How could this possibly be worse?"

"Have you even seen yourself, Annie?" he replied venomously. "It's like they just stripped you of your dignity and then left behind a little fraction of it with a note saying, 'Oh, by the way, we didn't quite need _all_ of this, so you can keep this teeny sliver as a cruel reminder of exactly how much innocence we stole from you'."

I raised my eyebrows at him. "Honestly, I like having the sliver. They could have taken it all. I don't care if it's just an illusion of me retaining a bit of dignity, isn't it better than a complete, obvious lack of dignity?"

"Can't I just murder them all?" he muttered.

"Save it for the arena," I said glumly. He glanced at me in surprise for a moment, but if he had intended to respond it was cut off with a long, low whistle that reached us from across the stables.

"Whoa! Annie! Think you're showing enough skin there?" called Finnick.

"Oh, Finnick," I said through gritted teeth. "Finnick, Finnick, Finnick."

He threw a sugar cube into his mouth and his eyes flashed as he took in my outfit and the expression on my face. I could feel myself blushing as his eyes ran over my exposed body with a slight grin. He opened his mouth to speak but Lance cut across him.

"It shouldn't be anything new to you, play-toy. I mean, how many innocent young people have been victims of your love since we arrived at the Capitol?"

I blinked in shock at Lance's sudden rather blatant accusation of our mentor's promiscuity. When I looked at Finnick I just about caught a glimpse of a grimace before he regained his cool with a tight smirk. His face blazed as he glared hatefully at Lance. "Lancey, Lancey, Lance. You should realise that the victims of my love are far from innocent. And most of them aren't even young. Most definitely none are as young or innocent as our own little mermaid here. What age are you, anyway, Annie?"

"She's seventeen," Lance growled.

Finnick's smile grew tighter. "And again, for some reason seems incapable of speaking for herself. But you'll have to excuse me for passing comment on a young, innocent girl showing her skin. I can't help but feel a little unsatisfied." I was just trying to decipher whether or not that was the creepiest thing I had ever heard, as Finnick and Lance glared furiously at each other for a while. Then Finnick just gave a short exhalation of breath and briefly caught my eye. "You look very sweet, Annie," he said gruffly, then threw another sugar cube into his mouth and walked off with his hands in his pockets and a deep scowl on his face.

I stared after him, feeling both offended and complimented at the same time. And then I realised that a tiny smile was forcing its way across my lips.

Finnick Odair said I looked sweet.

"That is about the creepiest thing I have ever heard," Lance huffed, folding his arms across his chest.

"I'm not sure if it was," I said.

"Are you serious?" he asked. "He was totally perving on you!"

"Was he actually, though?" I asked. "I mean, all he said was that he doesn't see a lot of half-naked seventeen year old girls."

"Yeah, implying that he'd love to lure you into his bed at the nearest opportunity."

"Now _that's_ the creepiest thing I've ever heard," I said. I gave a shudder. "Gross."

"I just don't trust that sleaze-bag. He's as bad as the lot of them-"

Lance's next words were drowned out by the opening anthem blaring through the city as the huge doors opened onto the crowded, colourful city streets. Suddenly hands were grabbing me around the waist and lifting me onto the carriage (which was rather difficult because of the stupid skirt) and I could just see Holden jumping around like a madman and screaming, "THIS IS GONNA BE AWESOME! Oh, and good luck, you two! We love you – and they love you – SO LOVE THEM BACK!"

I looked at Lance and he met my eyes, parting his lips nervously and raising his eyebrows. I looked around at my feet and, feeling very unstable, grabbed his hand for support. He squeezed mine back, and then the carriage lurched and we were off.


	6. Chapter 6

I feel like every story I ever write simply has to involve: random late night chats, friends cuddling/spooning while on the brink of becoming more-than-friends, and weird dragged out romances that should have happened like half a novel ago.

But for those of you who know my Happy Potter fic (I think there's at least a few of you here :D), I assure you, this romance will not take twenty-seven chapters. But it's still a bit of a weird roundabout sort of love story, to be honest. I mean, I enjoy a good prelude to romance, but for this story I'm trying to see if it I can make it happen a bit quicker but for it still to feel real. So let me know how I'm doing on that :)

God, I miss Holly and Sirius …

**Chapter 6**

Lance and I shuffled our way into an elevator, and I had just reached its safety when I tripped and fell into the wall of the shaft. I spun around, and found myself staring into the bright blue eyes of that good-looking guy from District 1. He was wearing a stiff, bulky costume with a platinum metal chest-piece and large shoulders that appeared to be inlaid with thousands of pure crystals, scattering the light into rainbows in every direction. It hurt my eyes a little.

"Sorry," he said, flashing a charming smile and revealing a set of pearly white teeth. "Think I stepped on your flipper there."

It took me a moment to realise I was gaping at him. Then I shook myself and straightened up. "I believe it's more of a homocercal caudal fin than a flipper, actually," I said. "A flipper would be more-"

Lance elbowed me and I took that as my cue to shut up. I noticed the boy steal a glance at Lance, his eyes scanning his ripped arms and abs as Lance raised his chin slightly and set his eyes straight ahead. The boy looked back at me. He gave a sudden laugh and then looked at his district partner who snorted and stepped into the elevator behind him, making Lance and me squash up against the wall. The girl had a similar costume to the boy, only with crystal breast-plates as well, and poker straight reddish-blonde hair. They didn't speak to us again and then got out on the first floor of the Training Centre, leaving us quite alone.

"I know your stylist quite likely has something vital missing in his brain," muttered Lance, pushing the button for the fourth floor, "but I swear I'm gonna punch him in the face."

I drew back and blinked at Lance. "What? Why?"

Lance rolled his eyes. "Oh, so you didn't happen to notice Mister Crystals staring at your shells just now?"

I pulled a face.

"Of course you didn't …" he sighed, as the elevator doors slid open and our home for the next few days was revealed to us. Only we didn't notice that, because the blood-curdling screams that reached our ears as soon as the doors opened made it sound as if there were numerous people being brutally torn apart limb from limb inside.

Lance and I rushed out of the elevator to help whoever was being tortured, only to see the bobbing blonde quiff of Holden dashing forwards towards a screaming Esmé, the two of them totally unintelligible with hysteria as they crashed into an embrace.

"_Holden_!" Esmé shrieked gleefully.

"_Esmé,_ darling!"

"It's been too long!"

"Far, _far_ too long!"

Finnick was slouching against the wall, pressing his hands over his ears and looking positively murderous. I caught his eye and he said, "It can _never_ be long enough." But Holden and Esmé were still too ecstatic to register anything around them. They looked insane beside each other. Holden was a fairly short man and in her heels Esmé was at a perfect level with him. And his tall, brilliant white hair contrasted so starkly with her sleek purpley-black do; her ghostly pale skin with his, flushed with colour. I instantly felt like they should have been inverse twins, they looked so comically opposite. And what's more, Esmé was so classy and dignified and Holden so completely mental and childish. They both seemed to lend each other bits of their personalities when they came together.

I suddenly felt bad for how I treated Esmé, because she was such a blithering little idiot, but so was Holden and I hadn't been upset by his insensitivity to my death at all. He was so stupid it was hard to be offended by anything he came out with. I made a mental note to return to how I felt about Esmé in the very very beginning; finding her rather funny, in a novel kind of way.

In that way, all I could do was laugh when Holden pulled out of their hug and began fussily fixing Esmé's long, glittering eyelashes.

Finnick sauntered over and whispered into my ear, "It's gonna be a long night, darling."

And indeed it was.

After a couple of glasses of wine, Esmé and Holden were splitting their sides with shrieks of laughter, telling anyone who was still listening about all the many shenanigans they got up to since they were kids growing up together, which really couldn't be compared to any story I could tell about my friendship with Lance. How Holden had bought Esmé a pair of unique diamond earrings for her birthday, only to find she had bought the exact pair as a gift to herself just the day before! Tragic! How they got trashed and woke up in a canoe in the middle of a bubbling fountain after the finale of the Hunger Games three years ago! Hilarious! And other embarrassing stories they'd tell about each other – like how a heavily sedated Esmé bit her orthodontist's finger when she was getting her teeth straightened – or how Holden walked in on his ex-girlfriend and triple-ex-boyfriend AND his neighbour's landscape gardener in a hot tub – or how they both had a crush on the same teacher when they were at school …

And it just went on.

And on.

And on.

I mostly just tried to keep my mouth closed as I stared at them in complete awe, and also tried not to choke down too much glitter as I ate. Finnick sat down beside Sheaney, who was the most normal-looking person I had met in the Capitol so far. She wore a simple black jacket with a flowing skirt that reached her toes and a ruffled pink blouse. She wore glasses as well as pink contact lenses. Sheaney was quiet and only gave the occasional smile at the Holden-Esmé extravaganza. Finnick himself held his knife and fork so hard in his hands that his whole body shook, and I worried more than once that he'd break the plate as he bludgeoned his steak as if he was worried the cooks hadn't properly killed it before serving it to him.

Holden was halfway through another tale when I noticed that the atmosphere at the table had changed. Everything was suddenly quiet and the laughter had stopped. Then I realised that it was because he was telling _my_ story, the one I had told him about the first day I met Lance. My heart wrenched a little as he spoke it word for word as I had, even remembering the bit where I wasn't wearing ribbons in my hair the second day Lance came into the shop.

When he was finished there was silence at the table. Eventually Lance looked at me and said, "Your memory is unnervingly precise."

"As is Holden's," I said, looking across the table at my stylist. I just saw him point from me to Lance and back and mouthing the words 'So cute!' before I averted my eyes. I stared at my hands twisting in my lap. Lance's face was bright red.

I glanced up to see Finnick staring at me. My eyes widened of their own accord. I watched as his lips curled up slightly on one side, then he planted his hands delicately on the very edge of the table and said, "That was actually the most adorable thing I've ever heard in my actual life."

"That is actually exactly what I said!" shouted Holden.

"Are you actually kidding?" screamed Finnick.

"I'm actually not!" responded Holden.

"Actually-!" Finnick blurted out, before his eyes flicked back to mine and we both instantly erupted into laughter. At first Holden joined in but then his voice faded uncertainly and the others watched us worriedly. Finnick clutched his napkin over his mouth to stifle himself, but then we looked at each other and it happened all over again. It was a few minutes later when, eyes streaming, Finnick said, "Why don't we just-" he stifled a chortle "-go watch the parade?"

I was still hiccoughing when we sat down in a low-lighted sitting room on the most comfiest sofas I have ever felt in my _actual_ life. Lance sat close beside me, shifting me into the corner. Finnick took the armchair nearest us, but I tried not to look at him.

We watched the replay of the parade (with much excited screaming from Holden and Esmé) and I was glad when I could hardly recognise myself under all the glitter and sequins. I knew that technically wasn't good for sponsors, but I didn't really care. I was just glad the half-nude girl on the screen with the golden skin didn't remind me too much of myself.

"The crowd _loves_ you!" said Holden.

"Really?" I asked, because with all the cheering it was hard to tell who was screaming for who.

"Were you two holding hands?" asked Sheaney, straightening her black framed glasses at the television.

As if in reply, the Lance and me on the screen held up our hands in the air, our fingers linked, and waved at the crowd with our free hands. He was wearing a winning smile. I was smiling, too, but still looked a little confused.

Esmé and Holden both squealed at how cute we were, but they quickly turned into wails of sympathy for our dilemma. (I use the word sympathy loosely because they were still from the Capitol and couldn't have cared _that_ much about our imminent deaths.)

"I don't remember telling you to do that," said Finnick carefully.

"_I_ don't remember you telling us to do much at all," said Lance, not looking away from the screen. "You just stalked off with a handful of sugar cubes."

Finnick stuck his tongue out at Lance while his eyes were on the television.

Finally, the carriages pulled into the Training Centre and there was a quick commentary from the presenter before the show ended.

"That was fabulous!" cried Holden, clapping his hands.

"With all of us pulling together, you'll both have the most sponsors in the entire arena!" said Esmé, bouncing up and down with Holden as they hugged each other. "Right, Finnick?"

"Sure," he replied, yawning.

Suddenly, Holden screamed. "I almost forgot!" He turned to Esmé beside him and gestured theatrically. "On the Victory Tour that we are _sure_ to be going on-" he shot Lance and me a cheeky wink "-I absolutely have to see an actual real-life mermaid in District Four! I'm thinking moi et toi et la plage et le soleil et des vêtements très chic-"

"Why, Holden," said Esmé, looking around at the rest of us with an awkward little laugh. "You can't possibly believe that mermaids really exist, can you?"

Whatever concession Holden's likeability had given Esmé quickly dissipated all over again. We all just stared at her, until Holden finally shook himself and said, "Esmé, you're so silly sometimes! Annie saw them with her own eyes. They saved her life!"

"And my parent's lives," I added.

"Oh, but-"

"Just wait, my lovely, I'm going to find a mermaid if it's the last thing I do!" he proclaimed. "And you'll be right there with me! Then you'll see, Esmé. Then. You. Will. Actually. See."

Esmé did not look impressed. She stood up irritably and clapped her hands. "Now, children, you're excused for the night! Off to bed, we've _such_ a lot to do tomorrow!"

Lance and I obediently got up and said goodnight to the adults. As we left the room I could hear Holden saying, "Mermaids are totally in this season, darling. It's, like, the new cat-look …"

"No way! Nothing will _ever_ be the new cat-look!" gasped Finnick, with mock-enthusiasm.

We were barely out the door into the hall when Lance grumbled, "I'm not even a child!"

"I kind of want them to get married," I mused.

"Who?" he asked confusedly. "Finnick and Holden?"

"No, Finnick and Esmé! Wait, no – I mean Esmé and Holden!"

"What – I thought they were brother and sister!"

"No!" I said. I thought for a moment. "No, they have different surnames."

Lance crinkled his brow. "Eugh! What the hell?" He shook his head. "I thought he was gay?"

"No, didn't you hear the story about his last girlfriend with the cactus underwear?" I thought for another moment. "He's either bisexual or a seriously confused little man."

Lance nodded, and then took my hand. "You know, maybe Esmé was right. If we hadn't been reaped we never would have had the opportunity to meet all these wonderfully charming and captivating Capitol folk."

I looked him seriously in the eyes. "Yes, Lance, I agree. I'm so glad I get to share this experience with you."

We grimaced at each other. It wasn't quite as funny as we thought it was going to be.

Then I said, "Lance, what did you mean when you said of course I didn't notice that guy from One staring at me?"

He looked startled. "Oh jeez, have you been thinking about that since we got out of the elevator?"

I gave a tiny shrug. "On and off."

He sighed and rubbed his forehead wearily. "I dunno … it's just like what Finnick was saying. You are pretty innocent, Annie."

"Oh, so now you agree with Finnick Odair, do you?"

Lance dropped my hand quickly and made a face. "I don't like him."

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

He scowled at me and surveyed me as he crossed his arms. "But I'll give him that. You _are_ innocent – you never notice anything! Like that guy in the elevator. Or when Finnick was hitting on you-"

"He wasn't hitting on me!" I hissed.

He shrugged. "Just tell me you'll watch out for him, okay?"

"He's our mentor!" I sighed.

"Yeah, and it seems to me he's got his eye on you. Just … don't get too close. He's a total sleaze. You just never know, okay?"

"He's vile," I agreed. Though at this moment in time, that was not exactly my honest opinion. But it had been at some point, so I wasn't technically lying.

"Try to get some sleep tonight," he suggested, turning to his bedroom door.

"I'll try," I promised.

Two things my best friend asked of me: try to get some sleep, and be careful of Finnick Odair.

In the first case, I didn't obey. I attempted to drown myself in the shower for about an hour and a half to get the last of the glitter off, and then sat on my bed for a while. I knew I wouldn't sleep. And my room was big but empty and had me on edge, so I ended up feeling trapped and lost and wandering back into the sitting room late that night and curling up on the comfy couch.

And as for Lance's second bequest, well what happened next really wasn't my fault. It's not like I went looking for Finnick.

I was sitting on the couch with my feet curled up under me and my head laying on the armrest, when I heard the footsteps, and instantly sat up straight and alert. A figure walked past the door, but in the dark it was just a shadow. But then the footsteps stopped for a moment and doubled back. Finnick's head popped up around the side of the door, his soft bronze hair ruffled back from his face.

"Oh, it's you." I couldn't pick up whether his tone was pleased or disdainful or simply surprised.

"It's me," I said. Then I gave a cry of indignation as the rest of him appeared in the doorway; dressed only in boxer shorts, barefoot, his tanned and muscular body smouldering in the low lights of the room.

Finnick Odair in his underwear.

"Finnick! I don't – Could you _please_ put some clothes on!" I said, holding my hands up to shield my eyes from the sight.

"What?" he asked curiously. He looked down at himself, paused, and burst out laughing. "Oh, I'm sorry. Does this distract you? I'm afraid I may have stolen the spotlight from that blank space of wall you were just staring at." He laughed again and entered the room. I huffed a little and dropped my hands, eyeing him nervously as he came over and threw himself down on the sofa beside me. I squeezed myself as far into the corner as I could.

Finnick placed a cushion in his lap.

"That doesn't help," I muttered.

He looked at me with a tiny smile. "Wasn't for your benefit. But I thought this was what you were dying to see, anyway. Finnick Odair in his underwear."

I remembered the reaping and groaned. "I assure you, I have no desire to see this," I said, waving a hand in his general direction and turning my head to stare at something, anything else but him.

"I'm finding that pretty hard to believe." I could still see him smirking at me out of the corner of my eye, but I didn't look around. I didn't answer, either.

After a while I heard him shift his position and give a sigh. "So … Where's Lancey-Pants, anyway?"

"In bed, I expect."

"Oh, really? I thought he'd have a twenty-four hour guard on you. You know, to protect you from perverts complimenting your mermaid costume."

I looked at him but couldn't read his face. His eyebrows were raised slightly, but other than that he looked completely neutral.

"What?" I asked.

He looked over my face. "Okay, I don't really know what happened earlier, but I promise you I wasn't trying to creep on you. I'm sorry if I did, anyway."

I shrugged. "No, it's okay. Only Lance took it that way."

He frowned. "Oh." He narrowed his eyes at me, and then a sly grin crept across his face. "So, do you still dislike me?"

I sighed and leaned my head back to stare at the ceiling. "Honestly? I only disliked the you I didn't know. Like, the one I saw with Esmé at the reapings every year and on the screens at parties and in the Hunger Games."

He pursed his lips and rolled his eyes. "_Right_, so … murderer, victor, Capitol lapdog, man-whore … Personally, I don't know what you're talking about. What's not to love?"

I blinked at him, knitting my brow. Even just the fact that he would associate the word 'murder' with the Games … Well, that was forbidden! The killing was all considered good showmanship, it was hardly deemed as murder in the Capitol. What was he thinking? And with everything else, why was Finnick Odair so aware of everything despicable about himself? And if he knew he was despicable, why was he still despicable? It didn't make sense to me.

"So now that you've seen me away from all that … what's the verdict?"

I looked back at him. He was sitting sideways, facing me fully with his elbow leaning against the back of the couch and his chin in his palm. I met his eyes, and there was something in them that I couldn't quite grasp.

I chewed on my lip. "You're still under assessment."

Finnick laughed loudly at this. I let myself grin a little, then bit down on my bottom lip again. It was still tingly from all the glittery lipstick it had worn earlier.

"And how long will this assessment take?" he asked with interest.

"After training, we'll see," I replied.

"I'm looking forward to it already."

We sat in silence for a short time.

"He's very protective of you," Finnick said suddenly. He met my eyes. "Lance."

I smacked my lips. "Yeah. We're … protective of each other."

Finnick was chewing his lips now as well. "Yeah, that's what I'm worried about."

"What does that mean?"

He scratched his cheek. "Don't think I don't get what you two are planning," he said. "He's your best friend – you're not gonna kill him. You might even prefer to die for him. I mean, what's left for you back in Four when he's gone? But he's thinking the same thing, and now you're trying to save each other instead of yourselves and you're digging yourselves into one hell of a hole."

I stopped and stared at him as he pursed his lips and averted his eyes. "You don't want us to be allies?"

"I haven't decided yet."

"But, why not?"

"Because it's a bad idea," he snapped. "I'm not discussing it."

I sighed impatiently. "That's exactly what he said. You're kind of like him, you know." I watched his face but it didn't change. "Lance."

He shot me a quick glare before averting his eyes again.

"Is that why you don't like him?"

He didn't answer me but huffed a little and folded his arms across his chest.

I contemplated his bicep for a moment. "I think that's why I can have a fairly easy conversation with you. Because you remind me of him. This should be a lot harder for me."

"I'm finding it pretty difficult," he mumbled.

"Then why are you here?" I asked. I wasn't mad or teasing him. I just really wasn't sure.

He looked at me and wrinkled his brow. "I really have no idea. You were sitting here on your own. I thought you looked lonely."

I thought about this for a moment. Then I asked, "Is that another way of saying that _you_ were feeling lonely, Finnick?"

This was clearly a mistake. He scoffed a little and gave me a derisive look. "What kind of question is that?"

"One that can't be answered with another question," I said quietly.

He rolled his eyes and gave a sneer. "This is the Capitol. And I'm Finnick Odair. I've got the entire world at my fingertips. How could I possibly be lonely?"

I paused. "You realise … that was another question?"

He glared at me. "Yeah, well you ask difficult questions!"

"Sorry," I said quickly. "Too much?"

"Yes."

"Sorry."

He stared at the floor for a long time, and I was positively bursting to ask him why he was sitting here with me if he really had the entire world at his fingertips. But I knew I was irritating him so I didn't. Instead I just pondered the question, and wondered if the same thing had occurred to Finnick.

I watched him for a while. After a long time he shook himself. "What am I actually doing here?" He shot to his feet.

I looked up at him, craning my neck. "I don't know. Actually."

"_Actually_ …" he began, and then he grinned. It was a sideways, almost goofy grin that I realised was a very rare and special thing. It was not the slight smirk of a boy trying to be sexy. It was just the real Finnick Odair grin. And it completely transformed the slightly intimidating man standing in front of me in his underwear into a boy, chuckling at some stupid joke.

And then he met my eyes, showing white teeth and dimples and green eyes flashing with amusement. "I'm gonna try get some sleep. As your _mentor_ I strongly suggest you do the same."

It was only then that I remembered the second thing Lance had asked of me. Be careful of Finnick. But to me, Finnick seemed completely friendly. Nice. Charming. Harmless. So I figured, Lance was just being protective. I didn't need to worry about Finnick Odair. In his underwear, or otherwise.

So at that moment I smiled widely back at him, and replied, "I think I actually will."

* * *

AN:

Eeeeh! Lance is gonna be soooo jealous! Hm … Or will he? :/ Since I started writing this story so abruptly and hadn't set my mind on whether it would go anywhere, it's only now that I'm starting to get super excited and coming up with back stories for all the supporting characters, like Esmé and Holden, Lance … And oh God, have I got the mother of all side-stories for Lance. I know what you might be thinking – oh yay, another Katniss-Gale-Peeta love triangle for Annie, Lance and Finnick (or a Bella-Jacob-Edward, as I like to call it). But - oh, well, you'll just have to keep reading and find out.

I am so excited.

I'm clearly failing at studying. This time, _definitely_ taking a break, OK? Please review anyway, and I'll get back to this with full force after my exams! :D Hope you enjoyed the chapter!

And I just realised it's my birthday today! Yay! :)


	7. Chapter 7

Hey! Thanks to all my lovely reviewers, you're the best! :) I just CAN'T STOP WRITING THIS.

Tell me what you think of the chapter, I wasn't planning on writing so much about training and I hope it's not boring …

**Chapter 7**

The next morning I found myself inexplicably spending much of my time staring at Finnick. Watching his face. Waiting for the secret smile. Dying to see the childish glint in his sea-green eyes, the dimples, the cheeks stretched too wide and the white teeth.

It didn't come. It was a secret smile, after all.

Occasionally I would realise what I was doing and widened my eyes and stared at my breakfast instead. But it wasn't long before I'd be back watching him obsessively. At some point I noticed that I was most likely losing my mind. My actual mind.

Maybe the smile only came out at night. Or when there weren't so many Capitol people around. Or when he was wearing nothing but underwear. You never know.

I somewhat came to my senses when Lance emerged from his room, stretching and rumpling his un-brushed sandy hair. He was wearing the same training clothes as I was; a tight grey polo t-shirt and matching tracksuit bottoms with thin green stripes down the legs and across the shoulders.

He sat down at the table with me, Finnick and Esmé. The table was silent for a while. It was Esmé who broke it.

"Annie," she began uncertainly, "is there something you want to ask Finnick?"

My eyes widened in horror, and Finnick glanced up curiously to catch me staring at him before I had time to avert my eyes. For a second I was frozen in his gaze, and I felt my face turn scarlet as I stammered out, "Um – I-"

"Oh, yeah. Shouldn't you be telling us what to do in training today?" piped up Lance. I almost sighed in relief. It occurred to me how often Lance did speak up for me, and hoped Finnick wouldn't comment on it like he had done before.

Finnick's eyes left mine as he cocked an eyebrow at Lance. "Oh, so _now_ you want my help?"

Lance's face hardened, but it quickly fell into a sheepish expression. Neither of us could deny that we had no idea how to act once we got into training.

Luckily, Finnick was smiling. "Right," he said. "So first things first: we need you two to benefit as much as possible from the training time. Lance, you should be fairly well-prepared for this, so I'll start with Annie." He looked at me seriously and pointed his spoon. "Your major task is to find a weapon. Now, when you first get down there I don't want you to go straight for the weapons and start swinging them about – that's the time when everyone's watching everyone. And I don't just mean the Gamemakers – who'll be overlooking the whole session – I'm talking about the Careers from One and Two. Since we're from Four they'll have their eyes on you two for allies. Or else competition.

"So Annie, since you don't have much going for you just yet, we don't want you to draw attention to yourself. Go to some other stations first. Light a fire. Practise camouflage. Learn a few edible plants or something. Then, right before lunch have a wander over to a weapon that takes your fancy. Talk to the trainers but don't try anything just yet. And under no circumstances should you attempt anything if you feel the Careers are watching you. After lunch everyone will be good and focussed on their own thing. That's your time to get into action. Try out archery. If you really don't feel confident with throwing then stay away from the knives and spears, but I'd like you to try as much as you can."

How did Finnick know I wasn't confident with throwing? It was a moment before I remembered the moment on the beach when I had chucked the shell so weakly into the water, and then told him I'd stay away from throwing things in training. I couldn't help feeling a little awed at how he remembered that little thing. Then it hit me – he'd been sorting out strategies for us from the very moment our names came out of those glass bowls. I had to admire him a little for that. He was really _trying._

And even though it had only been a joke at the time, now my palms were starting to sweat at the idea of having to wield a weapon in training in front of all the other tributes. What if I couldn't use anything? What if I was completely worthless at protecting Lance's life in the arena? What if the Careers picked up on my weakness and took me for an easy target?

I took a deep breath and said, "Okay."

Finnick pressed his lips together bracingly. He turned to Lance. "Okay, what I want _you_ to do is take advantage of the time at the start when everyone's sussing each other out. Go to the spears and try out the ones they have – they might be slightly different to what you're used to. But don't spend too long on what you're good at. Try out the other weapons too. You should do well with that stuff and you'll make a good first impression. After lunch, try your hand at some survival skills. That's all I've got for now."

Lance nodded. There was something reassuring about Finnick's tone. He seemed to know what he was talking about. He seemed to _care._

We finished breakfast and got up to leave. Esmé and Finnick both wished us luck.

"Oh, I almost forgot," said Finnick, when we had almost reached the door. He turned in his chair and looked sternly at us. "Be friendly. You could still have allies in there yet."

"Are we trying to make allies?" asked Lance uncertainly.

"You're trying to keep your options open," Finnick replied. He grinned a little, but not a lot. "Have fun down there."

We stepped out into the hall and Lance pushed the button for the elevator. It was only then that I noticed his fists were clenched, and I looked at his face to see him biting his teeth together.

"You did a good job of keeping your cool in there," I observed. I was hoping he realised that having a go at Finnick every time he opened his mouth was in no way helpful to one of us winning the Games. "What's the problem now?"

The lights flashed around the top of the elevator, indicating it was already below us and descending. Lance glanced around at the dining room door and then leaned closer to me, lowering his voice. "Now? You didn't happen to notice he has us at opposite stations for the entire day?" He met my eyes meaningfully and hissed, "He's trying to split us up!"

I rolled my eyes. "His plan makes sense and you know it." The lights were flashing up again and the glass elevator rose to our level and then kept going.

Lance cursed and jammed his finger into the button again. "What about having other allies? Why's he so keen for us to team up with tributes when he doesn't even want the two of to have an alliance?"

"He never said we can't be allies. But …" I groaned when it looked like the elevator was going all the way to the top floor.

"But what?"

I blinked a few times and turned to Lance. "The Careers might want you as ally, but there's no chance they'll take me. I don't know how much Finnick's plan can fool them. Just look at my arms."

Lance pouted his lips. "They either get both of us or neither one. I don't especially want to team with anyone."

"Like he said, though. It can't hurt to have the option." We watched the lights reach the top and then begin to fall again. Before they reached us, I said, "And it mightn't be such a bad thing, being separated at training. Because then when we get in the arena, we'll both have different skills to put together. You know?"

Finally the elevator doors slid open, revealing the two tributes from District 12. I recognised the blonde girl as the one who had cried at the reaping. I was about to smile at her but faltered when I remembered that Finnick said she had been faking it to look weak. But then that meant she was clever. Clever but sly. She probably wouldn't want to be allies with us because apparently we were supposed to be Careers. I let myself smile at her in the end, being too confused to bother trying to decipher it. Maybe my smile would confuse her as much.

Lance and I stepped into the elevator with them, and the door silently shut.

"I suppose," said Lance, and it took me a moment to remember what we had been talking about. Then he shot me a sideways glance. "Quick question – Why are you defending him?"

I thought for a moment. "Because you're blinded by your intolerance."

Lance gasped as if I had just physically hurt him and then laughed.

There was a short talk before training started (rules, guidelines, that sort of thing), as the twenty-four of us stood in a wide circle. Some of the tributes stared at their feet or cast worried eyes around at their opponents, others stood confidently and glared around at the meat. The boy from 2 looked even more massive in reality, his arms like tree-trunks were folded across his beefy chest. I tried to imagine being allies with someone like that and it was next to impossible. I suddenly realised that one of these kids was probably going to be my killer. I say _probably_ because it was either that or something natural in the arena bringing about my end. Starvation. Exposure. Muttations. Drowning.

Hard to decide which sounds the worst way to go.

I looked away from the bristly brown hair of the tank from 2 and found a pair of blue eyes already looking in my direction. That good-looking boy from 1. I glanced at Lance beside me and back at the other boy. Maybe he was looking at Lance, wondering if he'd make a good ally. I kept looking around at the others, trying to memorise them now. I was just starting to wish I had names to match the faces when Lance elbowed me, telling me the talk was over and it was time to start training.

We bid each other luck and then he put his hands in his pockets and strolled over to the weights. I stood in the middle of the floor for a moment, feeling totally lost, before I caught a glance of the knotting station which was completely deserted but for a bored looking demonstrator. I headed straight there.

I realised that even though I didn't have as wide a knowledge of useful knots as Lance did from being out on the fishing boats, I still knew a fair few handy ones from a life of stringing necklaces and bracelets. The trainer was only delighted to help as well. I found that the knot for a noose was almost exactly the same as the one I use for the ends of bracelets, to slide them tighter and looser. Feeling confident, I followed my instincts to the station that taught snares. I guessed it would be helpful if I could find food in the arena. Even if I couldn't use a weapon, I could feed us while Lance took care of the defence. Until one of us had to die.

"Uh … Are you all right?"

I looked up at the trainer, and realised I had frozen stiff and was beginning to hyperventilate. I screwed my eyes shut and forced myself to breathe, then opened them again and nodded. She looked at me a bit oddly but I just turned away and tried to get back to my snare while my face grew hot. I couldn't remember where I was with the trap so I just started again, praying that it was almost lunchtime so that I could see Lance again. I had totally taken for granted how sane he had been keeping me until now. I wondered if I told Finnick this would he let us stick together for the rest of the training sessions.

Distracted again, I was on my third attempt at the same snare before I realised there was no way I could gather enough concentration to get this done. I left the station and cast around wildly for something to try that wouldn't require too much thought. I didn't want my time here to be a waste but at the same time I wanted to get out as soon as possible. I ended up sitting at the fire-making station before I looked around and panicked when I realised it was almost lunchtime. I immediately dropped what I was doing and strolled over to weapon training as casually as I could.

I saw Lance with the boy from 7 by the throwing axes. I watched as the boy hit dummy after dummy in the chest with the axes. Lance had a go and he wasn't bad at all, he always hit the target but not exactly in the chest as the boy had. I refrained from joining him and went over to the knife station instead.

The trainer gave me a run-through of the knives, how to hold them, throw them, stabbing techniques and stuff. I kept with Finnick's plan and didn't actually try anything, but touched all the knives and weighed them in my hands. I was just thinking of moving on when something whizzed past my ear and a knife hit a dummy right in between its eyes. I spun around to see the girl from District 1 with the beautiful red hair, smiling at her own hit.

She saw me staring and her smile grew wider as she approached. "Hey, you're District Four, right?" I nodded, feeling my heartbeat quicken. "It's Annie, isn't it?" I nodded again, thrown off by the fact that she already knew my name. Had her mentor made her learn the other Careers before coming in today?

She raised her eyebrows slightly. "I'm Juliet from One," she said, turning her eyes back to the knives and raking them with a hungry look.

I finally found my voice. "It's nice to meet you," I said (even though it wasn't really, it's just a thing people say). I held out my hand but she just looked at it and laughed like she had last night in the elevator and I dropped it, wondering what the joke was.

This was probably the biggest challenge so far; talking to a girl I didn't know at all and trying to be cool. I was like the least cool person in the world. I can talk to Lance normally enough. I can talk to Finnick because he's pretty easy to talk to. I can talk to Esmé and Holden because they hardly seem like real people. But these other tributes were my _peers._ I'm not so good with peers.

I should probably have let Finnick know about that. It was looking like Lance would be the one getting allies for us, if we needed them.

"Okay, I'm just going to come out with it," proclaimed the girl, Juliet as I should start calling her. She grinned embarrassedly and leaned down to me, meeting my eyes with her pretty blue ones. And then she whispered, "What's Finnick Odair like in real-life?" I just blinked at her while she giggled and said, "He's _so_ dreamy! How lucky are you?"

"I don't know," I answered.

"So, seriously, what's he like?"

I thought for a moment, wondering how I was supposed to answer a question like that. And mostly for his and Lance's benefits, I said, "He's really charming but he's a total sleaze-bag. I mean, he always makes crude jokes and stuff."

I grinned a bit as the girl raised her eyebrows further. "Oh wow, really?" I nodded. She looked interested, and then said, "Does he flirt with you?"

That one completely threw me. Did Finnick flirt with me? Lance probably would have said yes but I was highly doubtful. Before the silence grew too long I stammered out a, "N – _yyes_. Yes."

"Wow, I wish my mentor was like that," she said with a laugh. I laughed nervously along with her even though I didn't know why anyone would want their mentor to flirt with them. I'd rather them helping me to stay alive and stuff, but I guess some people's priorities are messed up.

Juliet finally chose another knife, a huge brutal-looking cleaver, and turned swiftly to chuck it at the dummy. I watched the head slice clean off and go rolling across the gym. I swallowed and glanced back at Juliet. She looked around and called someone over to us, and I turned around to see her district partner from 1 looking a little perturbed as he put down a sword and walked over to us.

"Laertes, this is Annie," she said, touching his arm and nodding at me.

He met my eyes and smiled. "Oh, fish-girl."

"Mermaid," I corrected.

Laertes grinned widely, flicking his blonde hair out of his eyes. "Yeah, that's the one. I liked your costume," he said charmingly, as Juliet giggled and hit him playfully.

"So, I was thinking of getting together with Saul and Eve and all of us having some lunch," she said excitedly, hanging out of Laertes's arm.

"That's a good idea," he said in a bored manner. He looked at me and smiled again. For some reason it only reminded me of Finnick and his secret grin. "Why don't you get your district partner over and we'll all go?"

"Okay," I said, and looked around to find Lance. Of course, he had already been keeping an eye on me and made his way over as soon as he saw the worried glance I shot him.

"Lance, this is Laertes and Juliet," I said as casually as I could.

"Lance," said Juliet, purring his name as she looked him up and down with a seductive smile. "Hi."

"Hey," he replied quickly, then looked from her to Laertes. You could almost feel the tension in the air as their eyes met for a moment and then they blatantly checked each other out, sizing each other up as fighters. I tried to look at Lance objectively to try figure out what Laertes was thinking. He wasn't especially tall but he was stocky and well-built and he had a strong look about him. Laertes on the other hand was taller and slighter, but he had his good looks on his side, too. But I suppose Lance wasn't bad either. Juliet certainly seemed to be happy with the two of them. Something must have gone right anyway, because at that moment Laertes flashed a grin and said, "Hey, man. You coming for lunch with us?"

Lance smirked a little, then raised his eyebrows at me.

"Sure," I said.

Saul and Eve, I learned, were the Careers from District 2. They seemed to be already acquainted with Laertes and Juliet but were pretty wary of me and Lance and didn't get very involved much in the conversations at lunch. I noticed Juliet was asking Lance an inordinate amount of questions about himself, either to suss him out as a team member or simply because she might have fancied him. He was good at being friendly, and he seemed more relaxed than I'd seen him since before the reaping. I could tell he was enjoying the attention as well. But soon Juliet made the mistake of bringing up fishing. Lance was just saying something about spears when suddenly Laertes was joining in the conversation to offer his opinion, and Lance was responding enthusiastically, and then before I knew what had happened the two boys were having an animated conversation about javelins and spearing and were completely oblivious to everything else around them. Juliet pretended to be part of it at first but then seemed to realise that she had lost their attention.

"Boys," she said to me and Eve, rolling her eyes and laughing.

Lance and Laertes were still getting on like a house on fire when the topics changed from how hard they grip their shafts to the costumes at the parade, and the simple fact that he was talking about clothes made me realise that Lance was probably in need of a male friend. So I decided to leave him to it.

So after lunch I did as Finnick said and went straight back over to the weapons. He had been exactly right; even while we were eating Juliet and Eve had been discussing what stations they were planning to go to afterwards, and everyone was good and caught up in their own things when I picked up a bow for the first time. I took all the help the trainer could give, and then shakily took my first shot at a target.

I missed by a couple feet. My mind instantly began to swarm with thoughts of_ stop trying, you're no good _and _you can't do anything_ and_ everyone's laughing at you_ and _just run, run and get out of there right now GO GO __GO GO GO_ – but before I could feel awful enough for tears to begin pricking my eyes, I took a few deep breaths and got another arrow. The trainer told me to lift my elbow a little and to align the shaft of the arrow with my line of sight. I narrowed my eyes as far as they could go and released the string, shutting my eyes tight as soon as I did. I opened one carefully, and saw I had hit the target, not even too far from the bulls-eye. The trainer said it was a really good shot so I had another few goes until I was fairly comfortable with the weapon. I liked hitting the targets, but when the trainer moved me on to the dummies and told me which places to aim for, I began to feel a little sick. Was I really willing to pierce a real human's body with this?

I left the archery station pretty hastily after that. The day was coming to an end and my anxieties were just beginning to build again. I just wandered randomly from station to station, then stopped when I saw a sort of jungle gym near the weight training. I saw the monkey bars and immediately found myself walking towards it. The bars looked about fifteen feet from the ground and I had to climb up a frame on the side to reach them before I could cross. I did it fairly easily (because I was agile despite my stringy arms). I did it a couple more times then found myself swinging up to sit on top of the bars, looking out over the gym. I could hear Lance from here, laughing really loudly, before I saw him over making shelters. He was still with Laertes. I swung my legs as I sat on the pole, wondering what his game was. Was he trying to reel Laertes in or were they really just getting along well? And who knew what Laertes was doing, too. But I couldn't help feeling like he seemed a decent enough guy.

I really liked it up here, it made me feel like I wasn't part of it. Just looking on from above.

After a while I got up and tried walking along the top of the monkey bars, which was fairly easy. Then, feeling nearly weightless, I tried to run across them. I guessed I was good a this from the amount of running around I did on slippery, dangerous rocks by the sea, when falling into the water was not an option. And somehow, dropping to the ground and hurting myself was a lot more appealing to me than falling into a tide-pool or into the sea and drowning. It's probably irrational, but it's just how I felt.

I had started the cross over the top of the bars again when I noticed the girl climbing onto the other end, already swinging across the bars. I was going to run right over her hands. But I couldn't stop or I'd lose my balance and fall. I didn't know if the girl had noticed me above her, but as her hands approached my feet I was forced to leap over two bars so as not to step on her. I almost fell but managed to slip through the bars and catch hold of them on my way down, swinging my way back to the end and jumping to the ground with a sigh of relief.

I turned around and realised it was the girl from 12 again. She made it to the opposite end of the bars and then jogged up to me.

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry," she said. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," I replied. "It's fine."

"You're really good at that," she said, pointing to the bars.

"Thanks."

I turned and walked away. It took me a moment to realise that she was following me. I turned to look at her but she was squinting around the gym, and I saw her eyes stop when she saw Lance.

"Not sticking with your 'best friend', I see?" She even made air quotes with her fingers.

I furrowed my brow. "We've got different skills to work on," I told her.

"Oh, I'm sure you do," she replied. I made a face because I was confused and then she look at me with shrewd blue eyes. "Not a bad plan, but you really could have stepped it up a notch. Said you were boyfriend and girlfriend or something. They lap that stuff up here."

"But we're not boyfriend and girlfriend," I said, more confused than ever.

"I'm Rose," she said.

"Annie," I replied, and offered my hand which she shook.

She seemed to just ignore what I said before, and continued on uninterrupted. "I would have tried something like that since my initial plan fell through, but I can hardly pretend Axl and I are madly in love." She rolled her eyes over at her district partner, the minute twelve year old with curly black hair. I guessed this was Axl, but I still didn't quite know what she was talking about.

So I just said, "You cried at the reaping."

She met my eyes and scowled. "Too bad someone got there before me. Great minds think alike, right?"

I shrugged. Then it hit me that, _again,_ Finnick was right, and they weren't real tears that had fallen from this girl's eyes. And she was still thinking up ways of getting sympathy sponsors. And she thought I was doing the same.

"Lance and I _are_ best friends. I've know him since I was five."

She narrowed her eyes at me. "Oh yeah, I bet you've got the story learned off by heart for the interviews."

"I hadn't actually thought of that," I said honestly. "Thanks for the idea."

And then I turned on my heel and walked away from her.

Finally, it was the end of the day and I met up with Lance and Juliet and Laertes and we all got into an elevator together. On the first floor, they said goodbye and Laertes slapped Lance good-naturedly on the arm. "See you later, dude."

Lance hit him back and grinned. "Yeah, you need to show me that wrist movement you were taking about."

Laertes agreed and smiled his white-toothed smile as the doors slid close. Lance was still smiling, looking pretty proud of himself. I turned and watched him, and he glanced at me and tried to hide it. "What?"

"Nothing," I said.

I waited a moment, and then he cracked. His words came spilling out of his mouth in a torrent. "Okay, you know I don't like Careers and I'm not saying I want to be allies with him but he's just a cool guy, all right?"

"All right," I said calmly.

Over dinner Lance told Finnick about our encounter with the Career tributes, spending quite an amount of time talking about Laertes, and I felt like somehow things had eased off between the two of them. Maybe bonding with Laertes had Lance in a good mood or maybe they were just starting to hate each other a little less, but either way I felt rather pleased. And I didn't even know why I cared so much amount Lance and Finnick getting along. Somewhere inside of me, I wanted Lance to approve of him. Because I wanted to be friends with Finnick, I couldn't deny it. Not very practical, I know, since I was going to be dead soon and making friends with my mentor should not have been on my 'things to-do before I die' list. But there was something strange about him that I couldn't quite describe, and I wanted very badly to understand it. Why was he able to make me feel so comfortable when I hardly knew him? Why was he such a big defender of the helpless? Why did he seem so miserable sometimes? Why did he have a secret smile?

Something wasn't quite fitting with Finnick Odair. And suddenly I was fully intent on finding out whether or not I was right to think he was a nice person beneath it all.

"What about you, Annie?" he asked, and I blinked and met his eyes, hoping he happened not to notice me staring at him. He furrowed his brow a little. "… Bad day, huh?"

I told him about my shooting, which seemed to genuinely please him, but didn't mention how sick it made me feel to think about killing someone like that. Then, since we were talking about what we had found out by talking to the Careers, I mentioned the girl from 12 and how she seemed to think we were faking our friendship.

When I told them about the part where she said we should have pretended to be in a relationship, Lance looked uncomfortable and glanced at Finnick. "Would that get us a lot of sponsors?" he asked in a strained voice. "If we pretended to be in love?"

Finick spent a little too long chewing thoughtfully on his profiteroles. "Honestly? It probably would."

I exchanged a pained expression with Lance.

"But if you're not comfortable with it …" trailed Finnick. He glanced at me briefly and then Lance. "I mean, it's your choice."

"What do you think?" Lance asked me flatly.

I paused and then shook my head. "We'd have to follow through once we got into the arena," I said, my voice wavering a bit. "I don't think we could pull it off."

"Well, that's okay," said Finnick, as Lance gave a loud sigh of relief. "You'll find I can be pretty convincing when it comes to recruiting sponsors, anyway. We'll figure something out."

I had another attempt at drowning myself in the shower later, ignoring all the crazy foams and soaps and just standing under lukewarm water until I realised it couldn't wash away all the things I was feeling. Confused over my strange, sudden interest in Finnick. Guilty because I knew Lance didn't like him, but also annoyed that Lance was so unreasonable about our mentor-friend. Lonely as I felt all day at training. Scared like hell to get into the arena and nauseous at the thoughts of murdering someone or someone murdering me or someone murdering Lance. And dreading tomorrow's training when it would start all over again.

I found myself back on the comfy sitting room sofa, curled up on my side and singing quietly to myself in the hopes of reaching sleep.

Annie Cresta went to sea;  
Silver buckles on my knee.  
I'll be back to marry thee!  
How many days 'til I come back?

One – two – three – fff …


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

… Finnick Odair is bright and fair,  
Combing down his ginger hair!  
He'll be mine to love and care;  
Finnick Odair IN HIS UNDERW –

"Oh! So _t__hat's_ where that came from?"

My eyes flew open to see (who would have guessed it), Finnick Odair! In his underwear! Standing in the doorway, casual as you like! For a moment I actually thought I had fallen asleep and was now dreaming. (I'm not really sure why I would be dreaming about a half-naked Finnick but it seemed to make sense at the time.) When I realised that it wasn't a dream at all I almost fell off the couch as I scrambled to sit up. And I most certainly did not plan this; I thought it would be pretty unlikely to run into him here two nights in a row. Turns out it wasn't.

"What are you doing here?" I asked groggily, rubbing my eyes. He raised his eyebrows at me and lifted the steaming mug in his hands in response. I realised what a dumb question that was. Naturally feeling dumb also made me feel defensive so I snapped, "Don't you ever wear clothes?"

I flopped back down into my lying position on the couch as he retorted, "Don't you ever sleep?"

"I _was_ sleeping," I grumbled, rolling onto my back and sticking my knees up in the air.

"No, you were singing. So unless you were sleep-singing I can only conclude that you were, in fact, awake." I glared at the ceiling and rolled my eyes as he chuckled to himself. "And I must say, I can't decide whether to be quite flattered or slightly disturbed that my name has been incorporated into a little girl's skipping rhyme."

"Don't worry about it," I muttered.

"Though, I just have to point out the fact that I'm not actually _ginger_."

"Actually?" I mimicked. He gave me a smirk and I grinned back. "You kinda are."

"No … No, I'm really not."

"You are."

"I'm not."

"Then, what would you call it?"

"I – uh – browny sort of … reddish-brown … Um." I rolled over and looked at him as he brought his hand to his head and ran his fingers nervously through his hair. He shot me a glare. "Oh, shut up."

He may have been my mentor but I really was no good at following instructions. "… Uh, what you got there?"

He dropped his hand and cupped them both around his mug. "Hot chocolate."

"Oh," I said.

He turned slightly, then eyed me scrupulously. "You want some?"

I didn't say anything, and he disappeared and I found myself wishing he hadn't. I was still trying to figure out why I should care so much, when he reappeared and sat himself down beside me on the couch.

He grinned sideways at me, setting the two mugs down on the coffee table. "Marshmallows?"

I nodded and watched as he tipped a handful of them into my mug until it was almost brimming over, then filled his own with them. There were still a few in his hand when our mugs were full but he just sat back and popped them into his mouth one by one.

I was just watching him watching me, and actually had to shake myself and say, "Thank you," before picking up the drink and taking a sip. I got mostly marshmallow because they had started to melt and formed a thick gooey layer on top of the hot chocolate.

I looked at Finnick and he paused a bit and then laughed. "You got a bit of …" He tapped his top lip.

"Huh?" I wiped my mouth and saw the marshmallow goo on the back of my hand. I smiled and then turned my head so that I could take a quiet moment to cringe. As if he didn't already think I was an innocent little girl, I was now an innocent little girl with a marshmallow moustache.

He just laughed again and began to drink his own hot chocolate. "So, what are you doing here again, anyway?"

"I don't sleep. And this sofa is amazingly comfy."

He didn't say anything and when I met his eyes they were shining with a hint of a smile. "Oh, I thought you might've been hoping to run into me again."

"Why would I hope that?" I asked, not sure what he meant but getting a bad feeling.

He smirked at me and shrugged. "I dunno." The way he said it was like when Lance said _I dunno_ when, really, he did know very well. So I just did what I normally did in that situation, and ignored it completely.

After a while he said, "Nerves?"

And I said, "Hm?"

He wrinkled his brow and said, "Er, are you nervous about the Games, I mean? Is that why you can't sleep?"

"Oh," I said "No. I've had a bit of insomnia for years. Self-diagnosed, of course."

"Oh." Finnick held his mug up to his mouth, keeping his lips touching the rim but not taking a sip. He stayed like that even when he glanced at me and spoke again. "I get that, too. A bit."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He just stared into his drink. "They had to sound-proof my bedroom because of the screaming."

I looked up at him, knitting my brow. I didn't know what he meant. What sort of screaming was he talking about? I didn't really want to hear about what noises would come out of Finnick Odair's bedroom.

Ew, gross, I hadn't even thought of the other thing …

He must have read my expression because he said, "From the nightmares, I mean."

"Oh," I said.

"Aren't you nervous at all?" he asked.

"What should I be nervous about?"

"Oh, I dunno. The Games. Killing. Dying. That sort of thing."

"Were you worried about that?" I asked. To be honest, it was hard to imagine it bothering him that much.

"Me? Are you kidding?" he exclaimed. "I was a mess! Scared out of my wits, crying myself to sleep, you name it. Whereas you've seemed relatively calm since we've got here, if you don't count a brief breakdown at the reaping. Even then, you were only upset when Lance was called."

"I … I guess," I said. I realised I hadn't really thought about it very much. I was going to die – that much was clear – but I hadn't thought about the technicalities of dying. No more than I ever had, I mean. I tried to think what Finnick must have felt in my situation five years ago. He was only fourteen. He had a whole family back home, whereas I only had my grandparents who, let's face it, were already fairly old. He had friends, a girlfriend, maybe. I only had Lance. And Lance was here. I swallowed a little nervously and glanced sideways at him. "But you probably wanted to win, right? You still had some hope to cling onto. It's easier for me to deal with, because I know it's inevitable that I'm gonna die."

He gave a short exhalation of breath. "You say it so matter-of-factly."

"Well, everybody dies," I said. "It only scares people because they don't know what happens next."

"_You_ don't know, either," he laughed.

"Well …" I began mysteriously. Finnick raised his eyebrows at me, and I whispered, "Can I tell you a secret?"

He put down his mug and turned himself around in his seat, slinging his arm across the back of the couch and shuffling closer to me. "The first thing you should know about me is that I can _never_ say no to a secret."

I glanced around to make sure we were alone in the dark sitting room, then leaned forwards. For a moment I forgot about how naked and intimidating Finnick was. I could just see his eyes; sea-green and excited, set in his perfectly sculptured, handsome face. "I can see into the fourth dimension," I whispered.

Finnick narrowed his eyes. "You … what?"

"Well, you know the way there can be two dimensions – it's flat, like on a television screen?" I asked, and he nodded. "And then three dimensions is real life. You can go up and down … side to side … in and out?" His eyes followed my hands as I demonstrated this, then glimpsed up to meet mine, nodding again. "Well, there's hundreds of these dimensions. We just can't see them. But I know what the fourth one is."

"And what is it?" he asked in a hushed tone.

"Well, I can't tell you that," I said. "It's a major scientific breakthrough. Obviously."

"Aw, but now I'm curious," he moaned, cocking his head and pouting at me.

I said, "Oh, fine. I'll tell you this much. Did you know about the other dimensions there could be? Like, different worlds and stuff. Every decision you ever make could create a new dimension that's slightly different from this one."

"So … there could be a world where I never won the Games?" he asked.

"Sure," I said, wondering why he would jump to that so quickly. He must be thankful he's alive every day. "Or where you were never reaped at all. Or where you were never born at all. Or where the human race never evolved. Or where the Earth never formed and life didn't exist. Or where people are made of marshmallows."

He laughed. "So, what's this got to do with dying? Is the fourth dimension another world, like heaven?"

I shook my head. "Not the fourth, no. But I think there is another world after this one. I don't know what it is but that shouldn't make me afraid of it. I just hope I'll be able to remember that when it comes down to my death in the Games. I'd like to be able to welcome it. Or, rather, be happy to go there and it'll welcome me."

Finnick searched my face with his eyes. "You know you sound about a hundred years old when you say that."

I bit my lip, looking down at his bare chest. I backed away from him awkwardly.

He laughed. "And I do mean that in the best possible way."

I nodded distractedly and glanced at him with a smile. "GaGa Moon is a hundred and fifty."

"Really?" he asked.

I grinned sheepishly. "Well, I used to think he was, anyway."

He grinned and I caught a glimpse of the secret smile, feeling the blush creep over my cheeks at the sight of his dimples and straight, shiny white teeth. What I found most worrying was that in that moment I could hardly remember why I ever disliked Finnick Odair in the first place.

I suddenly realised how insane this was. I had never even told Lance about my 'other worlds' theory. And it had been so hard for me to speak with the other tributes today, I had hardly said a word to Juliet or the Careers at lunch. And here I was with Finnick, rambling about random topics like a maniac. What was going on with me?

"Finnick, what are we doing?" I asked quickly.

He drew back. "What do you mean?"

"Well," I started, and then stopped. I moved around uncomfortably, finally settling down to sit cross-legged, facing him. I met his eyes worriedly. "… Are we friends?"

"Friends?" he repeated, and I nodded. He looked at me curiously. "You want to be friends with me?"

I thought for a moment, and then nodded once more. "I mean, if you want to be friends with me," I said quietly. Suddenly and for no apparent reason, I felt shy. Like I was five years old and Lance was asking me to be his girlfriend. But this was different, because I knew I definitely wanted to be friends with Finnick. I just wasn't sure why, but I didn't need to figure that out for now.

He looked away thoughtfully. "Well, then I don't see why we can't be. Mentor – Tribute. Friends. That's not weird, is it?"

"I don't think so," I said, my heart skipping a little as he looked back at me and grinned.

"Well, it's settled then," he said.

And I said, "Good."

And he said, "Yeah."

Then for a moment we just looked at each other, and I said, "But don't go getting too attached. I'll be dead in a week, give or take."

He groaned loudly, and I began to laugh. And there it was – after a whole twenty-four hours being hidden away from me – Finnick's secret smile. And my heart did that little palpitating thing again for some reason and I wondered if I was sick or something, but at the same time I didn't really care because I was quite pleased about working out my friendship with Finnick. Still not sure why I wanted to be friends with him. Seriously, what had I thought was so bad about him before?

It was after about a minute of smiling at each other that Finnick's face dropped and he laughed a little, averting his eyes.

"Sorry," I said with a chuckle, "Lance always tells me I keep awkwardly long eye contact."

Finnick seemed to find this very funny because he laughed loudly and said, "Well, I dunno about Lance, but I happen to find your awkwardness absolutely charming." Then he stopped laughing and stared at the wall, widening his eyes. He hastily picked up his mug and brought it up to hide his face.

I quickly looked away, feeling myself blushing, too. And then I just felt a little nauseous. Why? I didn't know why I felt anything any more. Finnick … he was a confusing guy, I'll give him that.

We didn't speak or look at each other for a while. A long while, actually. Then Finnick asked, "But what if nothing happens? … What if you die, and that's it?"

I paused. "Well, then I'll be dead so I shouldn't mind too much about being dead."

He gave a small laugh and that was it.

As the silence naturally fell over us I lay back down, curling up into the corner of the sofa.

"Finnick?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I put my feet in your lap?"

There was a pause. "Can you put your what in my what?"

I lifted my head to see him staring at me curiously. "My feet. Your lap. Do you want me to demonstrate?" I extended my legs and placed them over his thighs, crossing my ankles. I raised my eyebrows at him and he blinked at my feet and grinned.

"Well, now you're just doing it anyway! I can hardly say no, can I?"

I closed my eyes and pressed my face against the inside of the sofa, stretching comfortably and grinning. "You can if you like," I said, my voice muffled.

I heard him laugh but he didn't say anything, and didn't budge my feet either. So I took that as a triumph for me.

"I used to sit like this with GaGa Moon," I said.

I heard him give a small sigh. "You miss them a lot, don't you?"

"Yeah … I only realised it now."

I closed my eyes and hugged myself. I don't know how much time passed, but the next time I heard him speak it sounded distant, like he was talking to me from the other side of a very thick curtain. "Holy cow, Annie, we might wanna get some sleep. When did it get so … Annie?" There was a pause, but I was halfway between wakefulness and sleep and knew it wasn't a place I could possibly manage to reach him from. His voice sounded even further away as he whispered, "Annie?"

I hardly felt him as he gently lifted my feet from his lap and stood up. Then a warmth spread across me as he dragged the throw from the back of the couch and covered me with it. And at this point I'm sure I must have been dreaming, because then I felt his rough hand brush my face as he tucked a chunk of hair behind my ear. And that's the last thing I remember, after that I knew only a hazy jumble of dreams.

* * *

The next thing I knew was jumping up from the couch in the morning, ploughing through a short dizzy spell, and then beginning the search through all the drawers and cabinets in the sitting room. The cabinet beneath the television screen slammed shut louder than I expected, and from behind me I heard a sudden startled cry.

I looked around and saw Finnick sitting up from the armchair where I had discovered him sleeping when I woke up. It didn't look like an especially comfortable place to sleep but I had let him be. Presently he turned his head about frantically until he saw me, and then let out a sigh of relief.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," I said. He waved his hand dismissively and sank back into a slouch, rubbing his eyes wearily. "What happened?"

"I should ask you the same thing. I was just sleeping and now I appear to be awake." I cast him a glance and he looked up to meet my eyes. He frowned slightly. "My door was locked when I went back to my room."

I felt myself frown as well. "Why would that happen?"

He shrugged, and threw himself back on the sofa, burying his face in a pile of cushions.

I went back to my search. After a while I felt him standing beside me and jumped.

"Uh, whatcha doing?" he asked.

I turned to look him seriously in the face. "Grammy Moon stowed away on the train and is currently hiding somewhere in the apartment."

He looked away from me. "Really? I mean, you're sure it wasn't a dream?"

"I'm sure," I said coldly, making my way to the next cabinet.

"Do you want me to help you look?" he asked.

I turned around to see him staring innocently at me. I glared back. He thought I was completely mental, I knew it. "Are you just humouring me?"

He shook his head. "Well, I don't know she's not here unless we look. Even then, she could just be really good at hiding."

I shut the nearest door with a snap and walked over to him. I found myself noticing his height again. I wasn't used to looking up into people's faces like that. I mean, I was average height and Lance was only about two inches taller than me. And I was the tallest out of my family, which doesn't really count for much when my only family is Grammy and GaGa. Other than that I didn't have many friends. But, well, Finnick was my friend now, wasn't he? I had to crane my neck a little as I tried to meet his eyes. I took a deep breath. "I was dreaming, wasn't I?"

"I think you were," he replied, smiling. I nodded a little and he said, "Breakfast?"

What began a really, really nice day (don't know why bonding with Finnick makes it a good day, but for some reason it had me in a good mood) quickly turned to the worst day of my life at training. I spent half the morning shooting with the bow and arrows and ignoring my gut telling me it would never forgive me if I killed someone like this, and even then I found I wasn't improving at all. In fact, I think I was _dis_-improving. Then it got a squadrillion times worse when I went to the knives and attempted a few throws. The trainer had to tell me to leave because he feared I'd hurt myself or someone else with my unbelievably bad aim.

By the time the demonstrator at the camouflage station told me I had no artistic talent whatsoever, I was on the brink of tears. I know this was probably an overreaction, but I just hated not being able to do things. I'm a sort of perfectionist, in that way, though it's not like I'm perfect at anything. I'm one of those people who's average at everything they try but not especially spectacular at anything in particular. But neither am I awful at anything, so this was completely beyond what I could handle. And I could feel everyone's eyes on me, and I knew they were thinking how pathetic and hopeless I was. They were probably already planning on how to destroy me, because it would be so easy by the looks of things right now. And I was so paranoid, I didn't even _realise_ I was paranoid.

The lady at the shelter-making station was sweet, and even though I was apparently a disaster at art, I was able to use all the different materials to camouflage my shelter into a thicket of bushes and make it look almost completely natural. I could do crafts, not art. And the girl from District 7 had given me a hand with the painting at camouflage, which made me feel a little better, too. Her name was Acacia, I learned, and her district partner (the total beef-cake with the throwing axes) was Jack. So now I knew the names of both tributes from 1, 2 and 7. Oh, and 12. And over the course of the day I learned a few more. Like the guy called Columb, from 5, whom I met at the edible plants station and saved from eating a mouthful of toxic freshwater seaweed. The trainer was impressed when I then recited the names of all the seaweeds they had displayed at the station.

_Fucus vesiculosus, __Saccharina latissima, __Fucus spiralis. _Et cetera.

A couple of times, I caught myself thinking about Finnick. I mean, I should probably have been telling him what I was getting good at or failing miserably at during training, because I was still under assessment after all. But whenever I had a conversation with Finnick that wasn't at the dinner table, we talked of nothing even remotely related to training or strategies.

And, to be honest, I was beginning to look forward to our next unrelated conversation.

Then we went to lunch and Lance and Laertes were still all over each other, which I was starting to get annoyed about. I wanted to talk to Lance about my day and to make plans for what we should focus on learning before getting into the Games. The way things were going, it looked like we were teaming up with Careers, and I didn't know how to feel about that. I didn't trust Juliet, and Eve had a very harsh laugh which hurt my ears, and Saul had a staring problem which had me all edgy. And I was starting to think that Lance was being roped in by Laertes's charm. Because who could deny that Lance was fair competition, and to save the exertion of taking him on physically, how easy it would make things if they could weaken him with false friendship and undeserved trust!

So when I was back on the climbing frame after lunch and I heard Juliet's stupid girlish giggle along with Lance's loud laughter, I felt absolutely furious. Sure, Laertes was one thing. They actually had things in common. But he had no right hanging out with Juliet. No right at all. I went back to snares, because I needed to take my mind off things and that required a lot of concentration. Lance was throwing spears with Laertes, swapping tips. Now he was completely ignoring Finnick's instructions of not showing too much of his skills. I couldn't even watch them I was so angry.

We found ourselves in the elevator at the end of the day.

"So … You and Laertes," I said.

"Yeah," said Lance. "He's cool, isn't he?" I nodded, and he went on, "I always thought the Careers would be total sadists. But he's not like that at all. He's just, like, living proof that a guy can be good-looking without being a complete arrogant asshole."

"Finnick's better looking," I snapped. Then my words reached my brain and my face went red hot.

Lance turned and raised his eyebrows at me. "I don't remember mentioning Finnick-"

"Well, it was implied," I muttered.

"You know, it sounds to me like someone has a crush on Finnick."

"_What_?" I exclaimed.

And that's about the time that I realised I had a crush on Finnick.

Which was _totally_ and _utterly_ and _completely … _just_, insane!_ How could that possibly have happened? Finnick was my mentor! Well, he was also my friend … But no, he was too old for me! Oh wait, it was only two years after all. That wasn't that much, was it? And … I mean, he just wasn't my type! He was all … And I was all … And … well, okay, maybe it wasn't so insane. No, stop it, it was! Oh my gosh … Why would I like Finnick? He was supposed to be despicable! Or at least dislikeable! But there was something about him I really … _liked?_ Oh hell. Suddenly I began to wonder if he liked me – but, oh my gosh, no! That's too crazy! For one thing, he didn't. For another … This was just insane, or I was insane, or the world was insane, and basically I was feeling a little insane. And above all, how did Lance manage to figure this out before I did? I hadn't even told him about the two nights in a row I spent chatting to Finnick.

So basically, I was feeling insane. And defensive. There was no other way to react, I think.

"That's revolting," I spat. "And – And, you know, it sounds to _me_ like someone's got a crush on Laertes." He looked at me funny and I prodded him chest with my index finger. "_You_."

"Oh, shut up," he scoffed. "Why can't you just be happy for me that I've made a new friend?"

Yes, good, steer the topic away from me and Finnick. Oh my goodness, me and Finnick. Finnick and me. What was I thinking? "Because – and I didn't want to say this because I didn't want to hurt you, Lance – but have you even stopped to think that he could be _using_ you?"

"Of course I've thought of that!" he exclaimed, throwing his arms out dramatically. "How stupid do you think I am? I'm not the one blindly putting my faith in Finnick and presuming he has the slightest clue what he's talking about!"

I could feel all this anger bubbling up inside me, and to let it out I just turned to the panel on the wall of the elevator and smashed my hands into random buttons, pushing them all and turning on all the lights.

"What are you doing?" yelled Lance. Because now the elevator was taking us past our floor.

I waved my arms wildly for a moment, too angry to speak. The doors opened on some random floor where two people were having a conversation in a hallway. They both looked up in surprise and Lance quickly pushed the close doors button. As soon as we were moving again I shouted, "Finnick's from our district!" But even saying his name was making my heart start beating like crazy, and I had to shout louder just so I couldn't hear it. "He wants us to win, Lance, he's doing his best to help us!"

Lance shook his head and sneered. "How are you so sure? He loves it here in the Capitol. He's just like one of them. He probably can't wait to watch us die for his entertainment!"

"Do you know how crazy you sound right now?" I screamed at him. "You know what this is, right? This thing you have against him? It's because you're jealous of him, Lance, you are! You're used to having all my attention all the time and now you're just jealous because you see me getting along well with Finnick too!"

Lance's jaw appeared to be on the floor. "What – so now I'm supposedly in love with you or something. Is that it, Annie?"

"I didn't say anything like that," I defended. "I'm not in love with you but I can admit I'm jealous of you spending so much time with Laertes."

"Per Finnick's instructions that we stay apart during training!" he yelled. He shook himself. "Wait, you're jealous of Laertes?"

I rolled my eyes. "Of course I am. I've hardly seen you and you've been spending so much time with him. We're not even dead yet and already, I miss you."

Lance glanced up as we passed the fourth floor without stopping. "All right, I've had enough," he said, and jammed his thumb into the emergency stop button. The elevator shuddered to a halt, sunk halfway into the ground so that we could see into the bottom half of the apartment and half of the elevator shaft. Lance angrily pushed aside the grating and clambered up out of it. "Why don't you just go moaning to Finnick about it?" he shot out, just before he stomped off to his room.

I slumped to the ground and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyelids. Hearing footsteps approach, I looked up to see Finnick's shoes appear, then his head as he went down onto his hunkers to peer into the elevator at me.

"I heard yelling," he said. "Bad day?"

I shook my head and folded my arms, refusing to look at him. Mostly because I couldn't stand the realisation of having a crush on him. And also, seeing him only reinforced the fact that I had somehow been charmed into feeling this way; all nauseous and my heart beating frantically when he met my eyes. And the smile, oh hell, the smile. I hated it.

"Do you need help?" he asked, and I instantly hated him more for being so nice. I shook myself and clambered out of the elevator on my own.

"I don't want to be friends with you any more," I told him. And then I rushed off to my room, leaving him standing dumbstruck in the hallway.

* * *

AN:

Lol, scientific breakthrough. If only she knew …

Eeeh, Fannie in this chapter! Or, I dunno, is it Annick? ;) I'm not sure what I think of it, to be honest. The chapter. It's a bit, um, meh. I dunno.

Please let me know what you think! ;)


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

It was certain. I don't know how it happened, but I was hopelessly crushing on my mentor. But what kind of crush was this? Maybe it was just that I respected him, you know? Maybe it was just a likeness of two minds. He carried a decent conversation. I mean, was I attracted to him? Well, yes, I was. I – Oops. Well, you know, maybe attraction doesn't really mean anything. I mean, what was I going to do about it? Did I want to kiss him? It was just his smile that did it, really. His lips were part of it, I suppose. So … maybe I would have liked to kiss him, what was wrong with that? I mean, did I have feelings for him? Of course I had feelings but it wasn't like I was in love with him or anything! That's crazy! But did I have loving feelings for him? Well … yes! But – Oops.

Right, this wasn't working at all.

So, any questions? Yes, you there in the front row.

Hi, yeah, I was just wondering … You admit now that you do in fact have a crush on Finnick?

Uh, yes, that would appear to be so.

Okay, so what I was wondering … I mean, I was just kind of trying to remember why you even disliked him in the first place.

Yes, exactly, very good. I've been hearing this question a lot recently, and now it's time for the answer. Now, let me just think.

Finnick Odair. Where to begin? Well, really, I can only start from the first time I ever became aware of his existence, which was at the District 4 reaping five years ago. Mind you, this tale is entirely subjective, because I can only tell it the way I saw it. (And I wasn't paying that much attention to tell you the truth.) But this is how it seemed from my point of view_._

I hadn't really recognised him from school. He was two grades above me, he didn't seem to be in the popular crowd but from what I could gather he was well-liked by everyone. Just another kid. Reaped. Sent off to the Capitol. It was only at the opening ceremony that Finnick Odair became anything but regular. Fourteen years old, with beautiful bronze hair and flawlessly tanned skin, tall toned body and the most handsome face you could imagine. Even then he was a wonder to behold, and with lights and make-up and wearing nothing but a single shell, he was beautiful. Magnificent. Extraordinary. The cameras loved him, as did one of the reporters covering the parade. (She was literally drooling.)

As if he wasn't already ingrained in everyone's memory after that, he got a ten in training and proved to be a natural charmer in his interview. Everything about him was enticing; the smile, the wit, the looks, the voice, the confidence, the eyes … Ah … And what was I talking about?

Oh yes … He was the favourite for every sponsor before he stepped a toe into the arena. And that was all he needed. He probably would have stood a fair chance anyway, but the gift of the trident was the icing on the cake. It was over within a couple of days. With his strength and his beauty, he was like a god. Poseidon, or Neptune maybe. Except I'm pretty sure those dudes had beards.

There was a rumour that Mr President himself sent the trident, but it's hard to know what to believe.

In his victory interview he didn't show remorse. He had the same arrogance he had going in. And here we go, _finally_ a reason to dislike him. He murdered so many without batting an eyelid. I could hardly hold that against him – it was the Hunger Games after all. But still. It was scary.

Oh, but we're only getting started here, folks! Finnick Odair, age fourteen: um, well, mostly still fanciable. As soon as he won he was celebritised way out of proportion for an ordinary victor. But, haven't I already mentioned? Finnick would never be an ordinary _anything. _He was constantly on the television after that, seen in propaganda and at parties being squeezed and fondled and doted on by a constant swarm of his fans.

And then, it was as if it happened overnight. BAM, sixteen hits and he's no longer treated like a beloved pet. Unless you treat your pets like …

In fact, it was not the way he was treated by his admirers that was the case any more. It was the way he treated _them_. Charming them. Bedding them. Taking whatever they could give. And when that failed to be enough, moving on to the next victim as quickly as he had with his kills in the Hunger Games. Even just thinking about those Capitol people with their faces painted inches thick, their ridiculous fashions and empty brains … How could he desire any of them? I suppose, because they were just as despicable as he. Or because they were rich, and willing. Or maybe the attention and glory had gone to his head.

And now it had been three years, and the stories only kept getting worse.

So now that we've heard the story, let's all take a moment to think about Finnick Odair. Hard to remember this side of him when you're thinking about the guy who had a goofy smile and green eyes that flashed, and who walked me to the beach to see my parents and covered for me with Esmé and mocked Holden and made me hot chocolate and found my awkwardness charming … That Finnick was perfect, I don't blame myself for crushing on him. Neither do I blame myself for forgetting that this was the same Finnick who prostituted himself in the Capitol for the worst kinds of people. But now I had to remind myself that that part of him – the fanciable Finnick – was only a tiny fraction of the real him. It was a secret side to Finnick Odair. I don't know why he was different with me, but it was clear to me now that the majority of him was spoiled and corrupted and distasteful. He was like something growing mould, an apple with fungus and only a tiny sliver still sweet. But not for long. It was like as time went on he became more and more beautiful on the outside, while his insides became uglier and more revolting with rot and sin.

By the time I made it to dinner, I felt actually sick to my actual stomach at the thoughts of crushing on a person like that.

"I had the most splendid idea for a strategy for you two!" trilled Esmé over dinner. I noticed now that she seemed to co-ordinate her outfits with whatever occasion was taking place. She was clearly in cahoots with Holden to make this possible. Like at the reaping, when she had worn real fish in her high heels because she was visiting the fishing district. And at the opening ceremony her eyelashes seemed to be made of glitter to match our sparkling costumes. And now she was wearing a smart grey suit with green linings that appeared to purposefully match our training uniforms.

I heard her set her knife and fork down neatly and pick up her wine glass, but I didn't look up. I hadn't looked up for the whole meal. Esmé swished the red liquid around in her glass. "You two can pretend to be allies and that way, when we send you gifts from your sponsors, you'll be able to share them! It saves a lot of hassle, really. Being separated would only be wasteful."

I clutched one hand into the edge of the tablecloth. "Twenty-three lives. That's wasteful."

Nobody said anything but Esmé tutted quietly. I realised that the only reason she wasn't scolding me for speaking like that was because she thought I was mentally disturbed, because presumably that was what Finnick had been telling her since my outburst on the train. I felt a pang of guilt in the pit of my stomach at the thought of that kind, friendly side of Finnick that I had so easily accepted for the real thing. Then I realised that I was thinking about Finnick again, and pushed it from my mind.

"And we won't be pretending to be allies, because we _will_ be allies," said Lance. "Right?"

For the first time since I sat down at the table, I glanced up and saw a pair of green eyes already watching mine. But they flicked away quickly, leaving me with a heart beating annoying fast, and a mind torn and very confused. I found it was a lot harder to dislike Finnick in practice than it was in my head, or alone in my room. And that was stupid and irritating, because I had every reason to dislike him but I still could only think of how very different he seemed to me in our own private conversations. His secret sweet side that was so contradictory to everything he appeared to be.

But I was getting distracted again and was missing the conversation.

Finnick had not responded to Lance's question, so the latter now dropped his knife and fork onto his plate with a clatter. "Okay, I'm tired of this. Can we just be straight with each other?"

Finnick looked up and wrinkled his brow in confusion, but nodded anyway.

Lance took a deep breath. "Are we going to be teaming up with the Careers?"

"Well, you tell me!" replied Finnick surprisedly. "It depends entirely on the type of Careers we've got this year. I mean, of course they might increase your chances of surviving in the beginning, but it's not always easy to tell when you stop being of benefit to them and they turn on you. They won't hesitate to kill you."

There was a short pause, and then Lance said, "You call that a straight answer?"

"I can't always give you an easy answer," said Finnick coolly. "That's not how this works. We're supposed to be a team – we solve these problems together."

"Since when have you wanted to be a team?" Lance burst out. He inhaled and breathed for a moment before continuing more calmly. "You've just been giving us orders since we got on the train. You don't listen to what _we_ want to do."

"You've never tried to tell me what it is you actually want. You just sit there and nod and take my advice, and go off with no intention of following it. And the two of you talk to each other and make plans of your own but keep it all from me!" Finnick shook his head, looking more hurt than angry, which I found to be rather odd. "Well, I'm tired of it. From now on, we make plans together. So why don't you tell me what you want me to do, Lance."

It was a little scary. They were both talking very politely but the words they spoke were hard and cold.

Lance leaned his elbows on the table and met eyes with Finnick. "I want to be able to protect her as best as I can in there. And I want you to be doing the same out here."

"You want to die for her?" asked Finnick. Lance nodded solemnly. "And you want my help?" Another nod. Finnick sighed. "That's all I needed to hear, Lancey-boy."

"I just thought you knew," said Lance quietly.

"I had only guessed," explained Finnick. "And guessing's no good when lives are at stake."

"So you'll do it?" asked Lance.

"Well, obviously I'm gonna try my best-"

"Hang on a second!" I exclaimed suddenly. "Don't I get a say in this? What if I want to die for _him_?"

"Not now, Annie," they said in unison. I huffed indignantly but that was about as far as I could argue with them. Esmé gave me a sympathetic look and rolled her eyes as if to say, _boys_.

"So since we're being open and everything," began Lance, casting Finnick a shrewd look, "what about me and her? Do you think we should be allies?"

"You say 'her' like I'm not sitting right here," I muttered, but everyone ignored me.

Finnick groaned a little and rubbed his temples. "I … don't want it. But I'm guessing we'll have to reach a compromise."

"But, why not?" asked Lance, clenching his fists as his voice grew more aggressive.

"Because," retorted Finnick, "have you ever stopped to think about how you might feel if you're doing everything you can to save her life in that arena, and then she dies anyway? How would you feel if she got murdered right in front of you and you were completely helpless to save her!"

"She's my best friend!" shouted Lance. "If she dies, it'll kill me no matter how it happens!"

"No. You don't know what it's like," insisted Finnick urgently. "Imagine you ended up winning after putting all your effort into saving Annie. That would kill you more than if you hadn't been there with her, trying to keep her alive. You'll go through the rest of your life retracing every moment trying to figure out what you could have done differently. It'll drive you insane."

Lance said nothing but looked down at the table, and I felt myself looking away too. My heart was pounding in my chest, thinking about the picture Finnick had described. Winning would be unbearable if it meant Lance's death. Losing meant my own death. And here we were, fighting over who got the pleasure of the latter. Everything about it made me sick.

"Besides," continued Finnick roughly, "if you're trying to keep her alive and she's trying to keep you alive and you're both eager to take a bullet for each other then that's exactly what's going to happen, and you'll both get yourselves killed."

"What do you care anyway?" Lance muttered. "You only want one of us to win because it makes you look good." With that he stood up from the table and threw his napkin into his pudding bowl. "I'm not hungry."

Esmé gave a dainty sigh as the door slammed shut behind him. "Just as I thought things were getting along so nicely!"

I glared at her. How had _anything_ been going nicely lately? How was anything about this situation nice?

"Seriously, since when am I the bad guy?" asked Finnick, looking genuinely confused. He met my eyes across the table. "Do you think I'm trying to help you for my own gratification?"

"I think …" I began slowly, and then stopped because I didn't know what I thought. I broke the eye contact with Finnick and looked sadly at Lance's chair. "I think it's doubtful you'll have any victors this year, Finnick." Then I stood up and excused myself.

I climbed straight into bed, and for the first time since the reaping, I cried. I cried for myself and for Lance. I tried to think about going back to District 4 on my own, but I couldn't. That was a place that I had already decided I wouldn't be seeing again. Even Grammy and GaGa now seemed to be a distant memory. And I genuinely wasn't afraid of dying, that wasn't the problem. It was never going to be easy but at least I had all this time to come to terms with it. And that's where everyone I loved would be one day. District 4 would have nothing for me without Lance, and without my grandparents whose times were probably running short anyway. No, my District 4 was dead. And death would be my new home.

But Lance had a different story. For a moment at dinner I had wondered if he would be better off dead, because of the pain my death would cause him. But it wasn't the same, he had a whole family back home; parents who loved him, his little sisters who needed their big brother. It was Lance who needed to return to District 4, not me. But he couldn't see that.

Finnick's words came back to me, and he was right about one thing. If Lance and I were constantly trying to protect each other in the arena, we were making ourselves even easier to kill. But Finnick was wrong about something else. He said that staying with me and trying to keep me alive would just end up hurting Lance even more if I got killed regardless. But I thought about separating from Lance in the arena, being alone, and then one night seeing his face projected up on the sky. I would still go through the rest of my life – no matter how short – wondering if if _if_ I had only stayed with him and helped him, would he still be alive? If he got murdered in front of my eyes, or while my back was turned, I would blame myself. But it would be as much my fault if I did nothing. So Finnick was wrong.

I tried to wonder why Finnick felt so strongly about this. Who had he lost? Who had he tried to protect but couldn't? His district partner had been a little girl around thirteen years old, who had been completely overshadowed by his popularity before their games. They hadn't been allies, as far as I can remember. Then I remembered that Finnick had also lost his mother when he was younger. How had that happened? Had he been helpless to save her? Maybe that was why he wanted me and Lance to avoid the pain of losing each other as best we could. Maybe because he knew a pain like that, and it was the worst sort of pain he could imagine.

Thinking about Finnick only made me resentful, but I was surprised to find my resentment directed at Lance instead. Since we had come to the Capitol it was like I had already lost him. He was constantly angry and suspicious of Finnick, or spending his time with Careers, or just being a drama queen in general. He wasn't usually as angsty as this. We used to have so much fun together. But now things had changed. How could he possibly believe that Finnick would like to see us die in the arena, or would help us just to get a bit of publicity for himself? That didn't make any sense. Whatever Finnick was, he wasn't that kind of cruel.

I planned to go to Lance's room to try and talk some sense into him, when there was a light knock at the door. I sat up quickly, wiping my eyes, and a moment later there was another soft rapping of knuckles against the wood.

"Annie?"

I gave a quiet groan and threw myself back onto the bed. It wasn't Lance's voice – it was Finnick's. And right now I was much too bothered and confused to see Finnick.

"Annie, I'd really like to talk to you." I didn't answer him, hoping that he'd think I wasn't there and would just go away. But then I realised that this was stupid – where else would I be? And Finnick certainly wasn't the type to give up that easily.

I heard him clear his throat importantly. "As you mentor I highly recommend you speak to me. At least let me explain. And as your friend … I just really _really_ want to talk to you." He paused for a moment. "Annie? Please open the door. I …"

He sighed a little frustratedly. "I've decided that I don't accept your termination of our friendship. I was the most short-lived friendship I've ever had, I think, and I'm not at all satisfied. So there it is, I reject your rejection. Could you open the door? Or do you feel I haven't embarrassed myself enough just yet?" He waited for me to answer, which I didn't. "Okay, I see. You know I'm not going to leave, though. A good friend wouldn't-"

"What do you want?" I asked gruffly, swinging the door open. He had been leaning against it and hadn't expected it to open so he fell through. He staggered and regained his balance, running his hand through his hair and grinning sheepishly. "Oh, now I'm in your room." He gave a chuckle but stopped short when he saw me glaring at him. "Okay, I'm here to win you back. How might I do that?"

"Win me back?" I asked, and he smiled at me and nodded. "What are you talking about?"

Finnick touched his hair nervously. "I'm not sure. You and Lance are confusing the hell out of me. And I don't know what I did wrong, but I want to apologise. Actually, I want you tell me what I did wrong and then I'll apologise, or explain myself, or both."

"You didn't do anything wrong," I said. "It's got nothing to do with you. I just don't want to be friends with you any more."

"That has got everything to do with me," he sighed. "And you wanted to be friends with me last night," he pointed out. "So what changed? What did you and Lance fight about in the elevator?"

"Nothing," I said rather unconvincingly. "It's not about Lance, it's about _you_."

Finnick threw his arms up. "You just said it's got nothing to do with me! Do you even realise the mixed messages you're sending?"

"I'm sorry, all right! Why do you even care so much?"

"Because! I don't know!" he said quickly. Then he frowned, and turned his head away. He met my eyes rather reluctantly and repeated, "I don't know."

This confused me a lot. "What are you even doing here?" I asked coldly. "Shouldn't you be sleeping in some sleazy motel with a stranger?"

Finnick's reaction to this was not what I expected. I mean, I don't exactly know what I expected but it was still surprising. He froze, his mouth hanging open slightly. Then he screwed up his eyes and balled up his fists and clenched his teeth together. When he opened his eyes, they glared at me with such ferocity that I had to take a step back. Finnick also stepped back, as if recoiling from a physical hit. "You – You have no idea," he spluttered furiously. "Don't talk about things you don't understand."

"What's there to understand? It seems pretty simple to me," I said.

He wet his lips quickly. "Well, it's not. You haven't got a clue … I mean, you're probably still a virgin."

I raised an eyebrow. "So what if I am? I've never been in love."

"Love? Oh please," he scoffed. He looked more angry than I thought was really necessary. And where had this come from? What were we fighting about? It seemed so irrelevant, but then I realised: this was why I couldn't like Finnick. And some part of me must have been hoping that when I accused him of all these things, he'd have some big explanation and tell me that he wasn't awful at all. And then I wouldn't feel bad about having a crush on him. But he couldn't tell me those things, because they weren't true. All he said was, "Well, if you want to get it over with before the Games you could always knock in for Lance. I'm sure he wouldn't say no."

"You're insane if you think Lance would sleep with me," I said. "Or I with him. That's a disgusting thing to say. Who even thinks like that?"

"Everyone!" he exclaimed. "Who wants to die a virgin?"

"I would!"

Finnick rolled his eyes and laughed humourlessly. "You're kidding me."

"No!" I insisted. "I really would. Sex without love is a meaningless experience."

"But as far as meaningless experiences go, it's pretty damn good," he finished wryly.

"You must be so pleased with your life," I said in disgust.

"Yes, I _am_ pleased, Annie. I really _really_ love it."

He averted his eyes after saying this, and I wrinkled my brow. The expression on his face was reflecting my own disgust. And had that been sarcasm? I wasn't sure. But neither of those things would have made any sense. Would they?

I didn't say anything for a moment, and Finnick just gave a heavy sigh. "Well, I'd still consider doing it with Lance if I were you," he said, his voice and face blank. "Better than losing it with a stranger in a spare room at a party in the President's mansion at the age of sixteen."

"What?" I asked quickly. Because I was older than sixteen, and that meant Finnick wasn't talking about me any more.

"Never mind," he muttered. "I've said to much anyway." He looked up quickly to meet my eyes, and I felt my fists clench of their own accord.

"If you think that I'd end up like you if I became a victor, then you're wrong," I said, my voice contorted with barely concealed emotion. "I'd never choose to love like that."

Again, Finnick's response was unexpected. He laughed. "Choose?" he said loudly. "Oh, you always make me laugh, Annie. What do you think choice has got to do with it?"

"I – what?" I asked again, my voice failing to sound demanding and just coming out as lost and confused as I felt. I didn't know what he meant – how could it not be his choice?

"Never mind, said too much," he repeated, and before I could say anything more he had turned on his heel and was out the door. A moment later, the door of his bedroom slammed shut and I was still standing there, frozen in shock.

When I finally came to my senses I rushed over to his door and pressed my face again it, closing my eyes. I wanted to knock and knock and knock and knock until he opened it, and demand he tell me what he was talking about. But I was scared. I was scared of his answer. And anyway, I wasn't supposed to care. One really shouldn't give up on a friend so easily, but no matter what he said, Finnick still couldn't be my friend.

Eventually I remembered that he had said his room was soundproofed, so even if I worked up the courage to confront him he mightn't be able to hear my knocks at all. It was still a while before I moved. I just ran my fingers over the lines in the wood of the door and imagined him on the opposite side doing the same. Maybe he was right there. Or maybe he was somewhere else in the room. Or in the bathroom. Wherever he was, there was a large chunk of wood separating us and no way for me to cross it.

After I don't know how long I trudged back to my room and crawled wearily into bed. Needless to say, I didn't sleep all that well. I half expected Finnick to come knocking on my door again, but he didn't. I wouldn't say I was disappointed exactly, because I knew I shouldn't have been thinking about it. But it was the only thing left in my mind.

He was right, though. This was not something I understood. All he had said was a mystery to me, and I had so many questions that I might never get answered. But as the night wore on sleeplessly, I realised that out of all the hundreds of questions I had, there was only one that really mattered.

If Finnick didn't choose the way he loved, who was choosing for him?

* * *

AN:

To everyone,

I have been gone for a little while, and I'm not sorry. If I fail my exams, then I'll be especially not sorry. It's truly remarkable how much I can let myself procrastinate, I actually _give_ myself more ways to procrastinate. And I feel a little bad about leaving another chapter like this, with friends still fighting and problems still unsolved and people even more deeply hurt and angry and confused than before. So I'll probably update pretty shortly :) Which I can do now, because I finished my exams! xD Thanks for reading, and please please please drop me a review if you can! Thank you.

With love.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

"I resent the fact that I'm treated like a child, when we're practically the same age."

Finnick looked at Lance across the breakfast table, swallowed slightly, and replied, "I resent that you don't respect me as a mentor."

Lance nodded. "I'm sorry.

"Me too."

I stared at the pair of them. "Seriously?" I asked. "Is that it?" They both looked at me, smiling bemusedly, and I just looked at Esmé and the two of us rolled our eyes to the ceiling.

"Boys," I agreed. We started to laugh, and I looked at Lance and he joined in. I cast a wary glance at Finnick, who was smiling a little sadly.

"When I won the Games," he said suddenly, "my friends didn't know how to act around me any more. And when people don't want to make things uncomfortable they tend to just avoid you. So, I guess I resent your friendship a little, too."

I met his eyes and he pressed his lips together a little bracingly. Was that why he was surprised to hear that I wanted to be friends with him, and why he was so determined to keep me? I suddenly felt awful. But I still had no idea how I was supposed to feel.

It was just starting to become clear to me how ridiculous this situation was. I was going into the Hunger Games in two days, heading to my death, and I had spent a whole night wondering if Finnick Odair was good or bad. Why was this so important to me? I had a private session with the Gamemakers this afternoon and I hadn't even given a thought to what I'd do for them! And now that he and Lance seemed to be on good terms, I wasn't thinking, "Oh good, now we can get down to the business of staying alive without them having a go at each other every two minutes." I was thinking, "Did this mean we were friends again?"

Did I want to be friends with him? The honest answer was yes, there was a part of him that I liked. A lot. But the other side of him completely overruled that. But then, which part was the real him? If he didn't have a choice in the way he acted, the way he loved in the Capitol, then the only other option was that he was forced. Forced to sell himself, forced to hide the other part of him. If that was the case, then the part that I liked was, actually, the _real Finnick Odair._

Which meant that …

Oh, it doesn't even matter! I still didn't even know what he had meant by what he said. _What makes you think choice had got anything to do with it? _Maybe he had been simply saying that it was a natural transition, that right now, it was easy for me to say I wouldn't turn into a whore if I won the Games, but that when it came to it I'd realise that things just happen that way. But that still didn't seem right.

I was going to be dead in a matter of weeks, maybe days, and this is what was troubling my mind? Maybe I _was_ crazy.

And yet, it was then that I decided that I'd have to find out. And I was pretty sure Finnick was the only person who would be able to tell me. Worming it out of him, now that was a different story entirely. He had hardly looked at me all morning.

"Not that you could ever replace Annie or me," Lance chipped in, "but if one of us wins the Games, we won't have anyone to hang out with. And we'd be next-door neighbours after all."

Finnick laughed and opened his mouth to speak when Esmé butted in.

"Not that this isn't the sweetest little sentiment," she fluttered, "but Finnick, darling, the kids have their private training sessions today and we haven't even spoken about-"

"Hey, they're not kids, Esmé," said Finnick, grinning at Lance. And Lance grinned back. And I hadn't a clue how it could possibly be so easy for two boys who apparently hated each other's guts to so suddenly and easily become friends. But it was.

Boys …

"But you're right anyway," continued Finnick. "Anything specific you wanna do, Lance?"

Lance shrugged. "Throw some spears, I guess."

Finnick made a face. "Well, you have got fifteen minutes."

"Oh," said Lance, and dropped his cutlery, looking oddly nervous. He rumpled his messy blonde hair for a moment and then said, "Well, I'm not bad at the, uh … the botany."

"Botany," repeated Finnick blankly.

"Yeah. Like plants," he explained. "I can ace the edible plants test."

"Oh, right!" said Finnick, sounding surprised. "Well, okay. It's good to show you're not just a fighter, after all. They like the well-rounded tributes, I mean I only threw spears in my private session. But I just realised that I'm not supposed to tell you that. Ah but who cares?"

"But you got a ten," I said.

Finnick did not look at me. "Well … I was also extremely attractive looking."

Lance laughed. "Are you saying I'm not attractive?"

Finnick shook his head sadly. "I'm afraid you're in a different league entirely, my friend."

"You're such an asshole," said Lance lightly.

"Yeah, but you guys still love me."

I cleared my throat loudly. Lance laughed a little and went back to his breakfast, while Finnick shot me a little startled look, but quickly averted his eyes and drank from his teacup. I stared at him until he finally put it down and looked at me properly.

"So, what do you want to do?" he asked me, his eyes dropping from my face as he spoke. When I didn't answer, he was forced to meet my eyes again. "What have you been doing for the past two days?"

"I've been … playing on the climbing frame," I admitted ashamedly.

"I've watched you on that thing," said Lance, his mouth full of scrambled eggs and toast. He waved his fork around and swallowed, gasping a little for air. He looked at Finnick. "She can run along the top of it. It's awesome."

"That's impressive. Don't undervalue speed," said Finnick. "Speed is good. Agility is good. Do you think you could make a show of it for the judges?"

I shrugged. "I guess I could."

"And how's your shooting coming along?"

I made a face.

"Right, well … do whatever you want." Finnick looked at a gold watch on his wrist. "You better get going, you're already late."

"Wait, what stations should we go to? I mean, it's the last training session," said Lance.

Finnick chewed his lip thoughtfully. "Survival skills. And why don't you stick together?"

Lance got up from his seat, and gave me a big smile. "Gladly."

I smiled a little tightly and got up too, glaring at Finnick as we walked out of the room. But he was refusing to look at me. And even though I was torn between thinking he was a loathsome human being who wasn't worth my time or a guy with some incredibly massive secret that I desperately wanted to figure out, I still didn't approve of being ignored. No, I was not happy at all.

"You know," said Lance, as we waited for the elevator, "if you had been paying attention, you might have noticed that I wasn't throwing my spears as far as I could."

I looked at him. "Huh?"

He smiled a bit. "And for all the things I've told Laertes about myself, I've found out just as much about him. So he'll find it pretty hard to turn on me without screwing himself over in the process."

"I knew you weren't that stupid," I said, and he rolled his eyes. "I was being a bit ridiculous, huh?"

"Yeah, you were," he agreed as we stepped into the empty elevator. "Buuuut I was being ridiculous about Finnick, just a bit."

"Just a bit," I said quietly. He glanced sideways at me, and I tried to pretend that everything was normal. But who was wrong about Finnick these days? I wondered if Lance had noticed how he wouldn't look me in the eyes this morning. Most probably, I thought. Lance seemed to know everything. He noticed these things, even when I didn't. But he wasn't asking me about it, which I appreciated. I didn't even know where I'd begin trying to explain my Finnick problem. So I just said, "Still a play-toy, though."

"But you were right, it's got nothing to do with us and the Games."

I stared through the clear glass walls of the elevator as we passed the ground floor and heading into the basement. Was I right before? Was it none of my business? I kind of wanted it to be my business, I guess.

"I propose we have lunch today," Lance proclaimed dramatically. "You and I. No careers."

"We can sit with Laertes and Juliet if you want," I said, meeting his blue eyes.

He looked into my face. "I want to sit with _you_." And then he hugged me, just as the elevator opened on the floor of the training centre. And I found myself staring over his shoulder at Laertes, who was looking right back at me. Then Juliet beside him turned around and gripped the knife in her hand tighter, her pretty face taking on a pinched look. And it was like it happened just like that. Lance hugged me. The alliance was over. Was there ever officially an alliance? I wasn't actually sure. Lance never would have agreed to anything without at least mentioning it to me. There wasn't now, so that was that.

I had never noticed how loud Lance laughed before. I thought it was just some weird thing he was doing trying to impress the Careers. But it turned out that it was just him. And it was kind of hilarious.

Lance and I lit fires and made shelters and he teased me over my awful artistic talents, and I teased him when he freaked out at the edible bugs station.

"We can go sit with them," I told him at lunch, while we were eating over in our own little corner.

Lance quickly glanced back at me. He hadn't realised he had been staring over at the Careers. "No, I'm done with them. It's bros before hoes now." He wrinkled his brow. "Except that that hardly makes sense."

I grinned. "So … I would be your bro in this situation?"

"Yeah," he said, smirking a little. "Don't ask who the hoe is."

We all had to line up in seats, waiting to go into our private sessions with the Gamemakers. Of course Laertes, being from District 1 and being a boy, was the first name to be called. He ignored Juliet as she rubbed his shoulders soothingly, and stood up.

Then he glanced at Lance, and I had to elbow Lance to bring his attention around. And they looked at each other for a moment and there was a brief pause before Lance said, "Don't grip the shaft too tight."

And Laertes paused, then gave half a grin and said, "Right back at ya, fish-boy."

Lance grinned at this reply, and continued trying to hide his grin for at least five minutes after the other boy had walked away. When they called Juliet's name exactly fifteen minutes later, I saw Lance look a little disappointed. But then the first three districts all completed their sessions, and he was up.

"I don't know any encouraging spearing terms," I said, "but break a leg."

He laughed a little distractedly and nodded.

I began to count the minutes after he left, and I was at three when my vision darkened as a shadow suddenly loomed over me. I had my elbows resting on my knees, my chin in my hands, and I looked up to see Laertes, of all people, standing in front of me.

I drew back in surprise. He just looked at me for a moment and then nodded. "Hey."

"Uh, hi?" (I was so confused my voice made it sound like a question.)

He slouched as he stood, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. He had already changed out of his training uniform, and was wearing pale blue jeans which were artfully torn at the knees, and a white baseball shirt with blue sleeves. He wore all these leather bracelets on one wrist and his belt buckle was showing.

And I had to say it, he looked extremely cool.

He looked casually about himself, then flicked his hair out of his eyes as he looked down at me.

"I just wanted to say … I get that you guys aren't teaming with us. And … no hard feelings. Yeah?"

His voice was really slow, and it was the sort of voice you could only ever associate with a person who was really really dumb, or just seriously mellow.

I just blinked at him. "… Really?"

"Yeah," he said calmly, looking around again. "Didn't really want to be allies with you lot anyway."

For a moment, I felt my face growing red hot in anger. "Because we're not good enough for you?" I asked shrilly.

He met my eyes and a little crinkle creased across his forehead, but that was about as much reaction as he had to my accusation. He just continued on in the same light, barely-trying-to-be-conversational tone. "Naw, Lance is a good friend … All those inter-district alliances just end badly, you know? Don't wanna … get left in a sticky situation at the end." He narrowed his eyes at me. "Know what I mean?"

"I – yeah," I said. "Oh."

I did know what he meant, but that didn't mean it wasn't completely shocking to me. My mind was desperately trying to figure out if this was some sort of ruse, but I couldn't imagine how it might be. He seemed … genuine. He was saying he was leaving us alone in the arena, how could there be anything sinister behind that? And I was fully aware that it was crazy that I trusted him so easily, but I really did. He had that sort of presence about him. And for a moment, I just looked at Laertes standing there in front of me, with his cool clothes and his soft blonde hair swept into his eyes and his seriously mellow voice. And this was when I began to understand how Lance had made friends with Laertes. He just seemed like a cool guy. I actually started to feel bad that I hadn't tried to get to know him at all.

"Sorry," I said shyly.

He just waved his hand. "And anyway, I don't really trust that Juliet wouldn't … you know."

"What?" I asked, and he just looked at me with a slightly pained expression, and then I understood. He didn't trust that Juliet wouldn't just kill us in our sleeps, alliance or not.

Hang on, he didn't trust his own district partner? I mean, he trusted Lance more than his own district partner? That was either completely mental or a total lie. But then again, I don't think I'd just Juliet if my life depended on it (which in this case was quite appropriate). So maybe Laertes distrust of her should increase my trust in him. Or something.

Or I should stop trying to decipher it and just stay as far away from both of them as physically and humanly possible.

"So … hopefully we won't be seeing each other in the arena," he said, flashing a charming smile.

I nodded and smiled back, and he made a move as if to turn away and I blurted out, "Are you gonna talk to Lance? I know he'd love to see you."

He spun slightly back towards me, eyeing me very closely. He took one hand out of his pocket to point rather lazily at the door. "… He in there now?" I nodded, and he swayed a little in thought. "Yeah, we might … have a little chat. Later."

For a moment he didn't say anything, but rubbed his neck slowly.

His eyes looked over me and stopped on my face. He smiled. "So … Juliet was wondering if you and Lance were like a thing now."

It wasn't a question, at least as far as I could tell. I just sort of shook my head, not even understanding what that meant for a moment. When it finally hit me, the first question that came out of me was: "_Juliet_ was wondering?"

He stopped and grinned a cheesy grin, showing his brilliant white teeth. "Well, yeah." When I just raised my eyebrows at him he said, "Because I've already turned her down, and Saul scares us all a little, and Lance is a fairly attractive guy. Don't you think?"

Laertes turned down Juliet? Well, now I definitely trusted him!

I shook myself. "I don't really think about it," I replied.

"So, you're not …?" His voice trailed away meaningfully.

I shook my head more determinedly this time. "No, we're friends. We had a disagreement and we made up. Why did you think – I mean, why did _Juliet_ think we …?"

"We saw you two hugging in the elevator," he said, stifling a yawn as if our conversation was boring him. I had to remind myself that it was him who started it. He shook his head quickly and said, "So you're not like secretly in love with each other or something."

Again, it didn't sound like a question. I narrowed my eyes, trying to figure out what he was doing. Was this some way of getting dirt on us so as to figure out our weaknesses? But, with me and Lance, we were each other's weaknesses and we didn't need to be in love for that to be true. And that had been obvious since the moment I burst into tears at the reaping and they stopped him from trying to embrace me.

"I'm not … Lance's type," I said carefully.

He stared into my eyes for a full minute before a tiny smile met his lips. "And … would Juliet be his type?"

I smiled a little too, for some reason. "Even less so."

"That's interesting," he said casually, as if a moderately interesting butterfly was flying past his face.

"Yes," I said, feeling like I was losing grasp of this conversation a little bit. Or had I ever had a handle on it?

"Well … I'll be sure to let Juliet know about that," he said finally. He flashed another smile. "I guess I'll see ya around, Annie."

"Yes," I repeated, and then he turned and walked away. I stared after him, mostly baffled and a little bit suspicious.

Suddenly a girl's voice piped up from beside me. "Wow. Hot mentor, hot friend, hot allies. Lucky you."

I looked at the girl from District 5 who was sitting on the opposite side of Columb, the boy with glasses who had tripped on his way to the stage at the reaping, and whom I had saved from eating the toxic seaweed. I think her name was Joulia.

"Yeah," I said, "the aesthetic benefits almost make up for this dismal situation." I looked back to the front, sighing, "Almost."

And then, for some reason, I was just thinking about Finnick. Hot mentor indeed. It almost made me laugh.

A short time later, my name was called and I entered back into the training hall. My mind was still on Finnick, which was completely insane and annoying. How did this happen? This was an important moment in my survival – I mean Lance's survival – in the Games. And I was thinking about Finnick? Everything about this was just wrong.

Still, I found myself at the archery station as Finnick had mentioned this morning. When I picked up the bow, I tried to pretend that I was someone else. Someone in a different situation, in a different world, with a different reason for picking up this weapon. Maybe I was from a small village in the forest and my best friend had been kidnapped by monsters. Would I be able to kill monsters? Maybe I lived outside a big city and had to fight injustice while saving the princess from the clutches of an evil sorcerer. Maybe I was a pirate. Maybe I was a stupid little cherub whose arrows made people fall in love with each other. I scratched the last one, because that did not give me any desire to shoot straight.

I shot well. Not fantastically well or anything, but better than I had since the first day of training. My beginner's luck was somehow revived. Or maybe it was the fact that this was the last time I planned to ever hold a weapon, if I could help it.

I looked around and felt my heart sinking somewhere into the general region of my gut. Whatever attention I had been keeping when I walked in had suddenly dissipated. Most of the Gamemakers were looking away from me, and it didn't take me long to pinpoint their distraction.

One of them, a short man with a halo of wildly curly silver hair and wearing a tweed suit under a long purple robe, had fallen asleep. And he was snoring. Loudly. To my horror, I recognised him from Finnick's description as none other than the head Gamemaker, Bilbo Attercop.

I felt like snapping the bow in half. Or crying. Or both. I was the eight tribute of the day. It wasn't nearly halfway through. They had been here less than two hours. And he had fallen _asleep_?

I managed to control the outburst, and instead I went over to the climbing equipment and swung my way across the monkey bars as quickly as I could, then lifted myself up above them and did my bit on the top. When I had done this I stopped and balanced on the furthest rung and looked back at the Gamemakers. If possible, the situation over there had deteriorated. Nobody was watching me any more, it seemed that everyone was so embarrassed and scared of their boss that they had taken to starting loud conversations with each other, or turning to the refreshments table or digging into their food and drink. I looked at each grotesque face, and not one was taking any notice of me. I might as well have been invisible.

I looked up, and for the first time I noticed the beams criss-crossing the ceiling of the training hall. There was one right above my head. Back in District 4 I had the attic room of my grandparent's house, and there were joists like that there, too, so thick that I used to take a cushion and sit up there when I needed a bit of a sanctuary. Sometimes, I would drape a sheet over them and make a tent.

Before I knew it, I was hoisting myself up onto the beam above me, sitting there and swinging my legs as I looked down on the large room from such a height. I looked over at the Gamemakers again, wondering how long it would take them to notice my absence from the room. Maybe they would presume I had left and call in the next tribute. I was worried for about a split second, but then an idea came to me.

I got up quickly and took in my route for a minute before setting off. I manoeuvred my way nimbly across the rafters, occasionally having to jump around the beams going from my feet to the ceiling at different angles like the web of a very organised spider. Very soon I was on the other side of the room, standing right over the heads of the Gamemakers, and still not one of them had noticed me.

I sat down as quietly as I could on the beam. And then, I dropped.

There was a large crash and a clatter as a large dish of grapes and a bunch of cutlery and chrome plates were knocked to the floor as I landed square in the middle of their long dining table, right in front of the snoring Head Gamemaker. Only now he wasn't snoring any more. My landing had woken him so suddenly he gave a strangled yell of surprise, and I heard a few gasps and screeches coming from the others.

I just looked down at Bilbo Attercop as he quickly wiped the drool from his chin with a look of both outraged bewilderment and complete mortification. And instead of making me laugh, as it should have, I just felt rather depressed. "Annie Cresta, District Four," I said glumly. "No need to get up – I was just leaving." Then I jumped down from the table and practically ran out of the room.

For a while I just rode the elevator up and down and up and down and up and half-down and back up and then two-thirds down which was, of course, our floor so I got out.

The apartment was strangely quiet. I went and knocked on Lance's door.

"Uh, hang on-" came his voice. And after a minute, "… Yeah?"

I opened the door a crack and stuck my head through. "Hey, I – What are you doing?"

He was standing in the middle of the floor with his shirt off. He looked down at himself and then over at me.

"I was sweaty," he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. And maybe it was, I don't know.

"Oh, okay," I said curiously. He rumpled his hair a bit and looked around. For a moment I forgot where I was, but then I remembered. "How was your session?"

"Awful. Bilbo Attercop was nodding off, I think."

"I'm sure he was. He was snoring in mine."

"Ouch," he said, shuddering and throwing me a worried look.

"I woke him up, though," I said, allowing myself a small smile. "I'll tell you about it later, with everyone."

"Sounds good," he said, laughing.

"So …" I said. "Since we have the rest of the day off, you wanna hang out?"

Lance's eyes widened for a second, but then he just nodded fervently and said, "Yeah, I'd love to. I just … I need a shower first."

"Okay," I said. I was about to leave when I remembered something. "Oh, did Laertes find you?"

He smiled. "Yeah. We had a little chat and … everything's cool."

I narrowed my eyes and hugged the door-frame. "He's a pretty cool guy." He bobbed his head a bit, grinning knowingly at me. That was my way of saying, "I _am_ happy you made a new friend who doesn't seem like a total manipulative sadist or anything but I don't want to say this out loud." Then I added, "You might wanna watch out for Juliet, though."

He just snorted in reply.

"So, should I just wait here for you?"

I had to wait for him to get over a short coughing fit. "Uh, actually I just remembered, Finnick was looking for you."

"Finnick?" I asked abruptly, my heart making little flutters with every beat. "… For me?"

"Yeah, uh, something about …" He shook his head unconvincingly. "Training scores. Or something."

"Oh," I said. I was trying desperately to keep my face neutral, but I was totally flipping out. What would Finnick want to talk to me about? He had hardly looked at me at breakfast, and now he wanted to chat? And about what? Would I somehow be able to slip in an authoritative demand for answers?

I was so distracted that I was already at my bedroom door when I heard Lance laugh behind me. "I'll just see you later, then," he said, grinning, and quickly shut his door which I had left wide open.

"Oh … sorry. See you," I said distractedly, but he was already gone. I stood alone in the hall for a moment before taking a trip around the apartment in search of Finnick.

I checked the kitchen, the dining room, the sitting room with the television and the comfortable couches, the balcony, and the hallway again, but Finnick was nowhere to be found. I checked some cupboards and under the couch as well, but no dice. It occurred to me that he could have been in his room, but I was still to nervous to knock. But by the time I had given up and made it back to my room, my purpose was already slipping my mind. By the time I lay down on the bed and snuggled under the covers, I was mostly just thinking about how tired I was all of a sudden. And by the time I was drifting off into slumberland, I was not thinking about anything at all.

I woke up some time later to the sound of Lance knocking on my door. And we did hang out, but I had mostly forgotten about looking for Finnick and he didn't mention it again. And I didn't ask why he had taken two hours just to have a shower. Maybe he, like me, had taken to having very long showers since we came here, just to try wash away some of the suffocating emotions of being a part in all this. His hair was still wet, too, because Lance was extremely fussy about his hair and refused to dry it in any way other than by air.

When we went out to dinner, we were surprised (and sort of unsure whether or not to be pleased) to find Sheaney and Holden joining us for the meal. But it turned out to be moderately enjoyable, with more stories from Esmé and Holden (or the gruesome twosome as I had begun to call them), and Lance and me sharing a few tales of our own. But this time, I wasn't really paying attention to Holden or Esmé, or even Lance. My mind was a little preoccupied.

Finnick didn't say a word for the entire meal. I stared at him a lot, not because I found him visually attractive but because I was trying to get _him_ to look at _me_. I didn't know if he was mad at me, even, because I had a feeling he was more hurt and upset than actually angry. That was just my guess. And I wanted him to know … Okay, I didn't know exactly what I wanted him to know, but I wanted to send some sort of message, even just to tell him that I wanted to talk. Because that was something I wanted very badly. I needed to know if I was wrong about him. I needed to know if that tiny fraction of goodness was worth holding onto. I needed to know exactly how big that fraction of him was.

Above all, I needed to know if he had a choice.

Occasionally I managed to catch his eyes, but he would just wrinkle his brow and swallow nervously and hastily look away again. It was a little infuriating, to be honest.

When we moved from the dining room to the living room, for some strange and disoriented reason Lance sat down in one of the single armchairs. Sheaney took the other, and Esmé and Holden took the two-seater. And that, of course, left me and Finnick.

He stiffly sat down on the opposite end of the comfy couch without looking at me. And I was suddenly very acutely aware of the fact that this was exactly the same positions we had been in the night before last. I thought about asking to put my feet in his lap again but thought better of it. It wasn't really the time. I just curled my legs up underneath me and tried not to be too aware of his presence.

When the scores began popping up on the screen, I suddenly had a very good distraction. I hadn't been nervous until now, I hadn't even thought about the actual scores.

Lance looked good in the picture that flashed up. His hair was all messy, but tidily so. The number flashed up next: nine.

Esmé and Holden burst out into shrill screams, Sheaney said, "Whoa," and Finnick reached over to slap Lance on the back. Lance himself looked more like he had been slapped in the face, he was so surprised.

But now my face was on the screen. My eyes were too round, making me look perpetually bewildered. I was so busy wondering if I always looked like that that I almost missed my score until the yells brought be back to reality.

Eight.

"Eight?" I asked. "That can't be right."

In the moment that followed, Finnick and I both seemed to forget whatever tension there was between us. Because he was ogling at me now, saying, "What the hell did you do in there? Were you just lying about your archery?"

"She wasn't – she's nothing special with the bow," said Lance truthfully.

"Eight is like a Career's score!" Holden was yelling. "I mean it's low for a Career, but for you it's just fantastic, Annie!"

"Yes, thank you Holden," grumbled Finnick, still staring at me. "Seriously, that's not half bad. It's not bad at all, actually. What did you do?"

I was still trying to get over it. An eight! Lance had done so well, but that was expected. But I was the one who had no useful talents whatsoever. So how had this happened?

"It's purely for guts," I said finally. Then I told them that I had dropped own into the middle of the Gamemaker's meal and scared Bilbo Attercop half to death.

Lance gave a low whistle and began to laugh. Finnick was already there, pressing his hands over his mouth to control himself. Holden looked like he was about to faint.

"That's just another reason why we're so desperately in need of a new Head Gamemaker!" said Esmé importantly. Everyone sort of vaguely agreed even though it was clear that we didn't really care.

"I think you would have got a ten if he was awake," I told Lance.

Esmé turned to me. "Annie, that doesn't really help," she stage-whispered. I was about to give her a filthy look when I noticed everyone else's faces and realised that she was right.

"Sorry, Lance," I said.

"It's fine," he said, grinning. "Saul was the only one to get a ten, anyway."

"Well, I'm proud of both of you," said Finnick.

"You guys are so AWESOME!" yelled Holden.

That night, we were not excused like children but were allowed to stay up with the adults and talk over the generic things – the other tributes' scores, our plans for tomorrow, and the coming interviews.

The interviews? I had completely forgotten! And according to the plan, Finnick was coaching each of us separately in order to save time. That meant I had a whole afternoon of Finnick …

No, I couldn't ask him about it then. The training for the interview was too important, he'd never give me answers at that time. And I couldn't stand that much time in his presence when he still refused to look at me.

So that's why, when Lance and I excused ourselves for bed, I gave Finnick a very meaningful look when he briefly glanced up and met my eyes.

It was a look that said I hoped I would be seeing him later that night.


	11. Chapter 11

When I'm not writing this story, I'm mostly playing video games, and today I was playing and this dude said to me,

"Ideal love is unfettered and passionate. Anything less than that can't really be called love at all, you know what I mean?"

And it made me really sad because Finnick and Annie's love is very, very fettered. Not just right now in this particular fic, but in general in the reality of the HG world.

And maybe it's not ideal love, but it's still love. That's all I wanted to say …

**Chapter 11**

My heart was drumming loudly in my ears as I sat on the very edge of the comfortable couch later that night, waiting. How I was to go about asking him such a massive, imposing question about his personal life, I had no freaking clue.

Hey Finnick! Oh by the way, this lifestyle choice of yours … _how is that not your choice_?

I was waiting for about an hour when I started to think he wasn't coming. Maybe he didn't get my message, or misunderstood it. That look could have meant anything, like "I had better NOT see you tonight" or "Don't come anywhere near me EVER AGAIN" or simply "Goodnight, see you in the morning!" or "I'm sneaking out of the Centre tonight to rob a bank and I want you to be my accomplice so you had better be waiting in the alley with a gun and please bring your own balaclava."

… Or anything at all, I guess.

I sighed loudly. I was so stupid. He wasn't coming. He had no desire to see me. I sighed again, a little quieter, and looked to the door.

As it turns out, he _did_ have a desire to see me. Because there he was, standing in the doorway with his hands deep in the pockets of his checkered pyjama bottoms. And – oh my gosh, he was actually wearing pyjamas. Well, just the bottoms, along with a plain white t-shirt. But still. Was I crazy, or could that have been for my benefit?

I surveyed him tentatively and then met his eyes. I saw his chest rise as he inhaled deeply, then he crossed his arms and leaned against the door-frame.

"Are you gonna come in?" I asked, after a considerable amount of time of us just staring at each other.

He looked away and kicked at the ground. "I didn't know if you wanted me to."

"Well, yeah. Didn't you get my message?"

"What message?" he asked.

"Uh, what message?" I repeated.

He narrowed his eyes. "What?"

"Never mind," I said quickly, biting my lip and looking away embarrassedly.

I heard (rather than saw) him cross the room and take the seat on the far end of the sofa.

We were silent for a long time. Then he said, "So an eight in training. Not bad at all." I glowered at him a little. He raised his eyebrows at me. "So what angle do you wanna play up in your interview?"

"Can we _not_ talk about this?" I asked.

He gave a small sniff but shrugged and looked away.

I watched the way the dim lights caught his naturally sun-tinted hair, where certain wisps glowed orange like short, thin pieces of copper wire. And he said he wasn't ginger.

"How is it not your choice?" I asked. He stared forward for a moment and turned his head slowly to meet my eyes. "You said, 'What do you think choice has got to do with it?' What did you-"

"Can we _not_ talk about this?" he asked.

I shrugged. "So … Shall we just sit here in silence?"

"No, we could talk about anything else," he said matter-of-factly. "Anything other than the Games, and my sex-life, which you do seem to have a rather worrying obsession with … So what about your sex-life? How's Lancey these days?"

"Fine, I think." I shook myself. "You saw him earlier today! And Lance is completely irrelevant to my sex-life, thank you very much."

He sighed. "That's what you think."

"That's what I _know_," I muttered.

There was another short silence and then I blurted out, "Finnick, what did you mean-"

"I didn't mean anything," he said sternly, staring me in the eye. "If that's what you're looking for here then you should just forget about it."

"I can't," I mumbled.

"Well …" He wrinkled his brow and gave me an odd look. "Why not?"

I took a deep breath. "Because. There's something I see in you, Finnick, and it contradicts everything I thought I knew about you before. And I want very much for it to be true."

"You're building yourself up for disappointment," he said.

"Are you sure?"

He just pressed his mouth tightly shut and shook his head.

I turned and knelt up on the couch so that I could face him fully, even though he was turned away from me. "I thought you loved secrets."

He grinned a bit, looking at me. "Hearing them, not telling them." He tapped his nose a little mischievously.

"Trying to keep all these secrets, you'll burst!" I exclaimed.

"No!" he said. "Stop it, I'm not telling you." His voice broke a little when he added, "I can't."

"Finnick, you gotta tell someone sometime. And who better than me? I'm here, and I want to listen, and I promise I can keep a secret. I'll take it to my grave. I mean, it shouldn't be too difficult, given the circumstances."

He had suddenly stopped all his glaring and complaining and was now staring at me with wide, fearful eyes. "I … I don't think you'd believe me."

I rested my elbow on the back of the couch. "Me? I believed my grandmother sneaked onto the train here. I believed Lance was a real merman, for a moment at the parade. I believed in the tooth fairy 'til last year. I really don't think you need to worry about that."

Finnick gave a short laugh and then, quite suddenly, it was all spilling out of him. He told me everything. He told me about how they had thrown him a party for his sixteenth birthday, and it was there that the President had approached him and told him he would be recruited into a very special area of work. He would be in the business of entertainment, and it would be the easiest and most enjoyable job in the world. Oh, and if he didn't comply, his family would be in serious trouble. Finnick's poor family; himself being the oldest of six and the next only eleven years old at the time, and with his father's illness … They were completely helpless. And what else could he do? He couldn't refuse.

His career started that very night, at his own party, where he was bought for the very special entertainment of a guest. And so he spent the next three years; being bought and sold, travelling in and out of the Capitol for parties or private nights with desperate and rich people, going from bed to bed and lover to lover. Only who would call those people lovers? These people who paid for his dignity, his innocence, his body.

"I hate it," he choked, clenching his fists up in his hair.

One time, when I was fourteen and he was fifteen, Lance had had this big dilemma over this girl in school who asked him to ask her out on a date. He had taken her out and then it came to his attention that she was a horrible nasty person and that he never wanted to see her again. And he wouldn't stop complaining about her to me, but whenever I tried to offer some advice on what to do about it he would refuse all my suggestions and get all angry when I was only trying to help. Confused, I went to talk to GaGa Moon and he told me an important secret about boys that girls weren't allowed to know. GaGa Moon said that sometimes a boy just wants someone to _listen_ to him moaning about his situation, but didn't need them to give him the answer to his troubles.

I never forgot this, mostly because I thought it would be important later in life if I ever decided that I could do with finding a husband. But now I found that it applied perfectly to the situation in which I found myself with Finnick. Otherwise, I would have been very worried trying to come up with some solution, which was damn near impossible in this case. So all I did was let him talk and talk and talk. It had begun so quickly that I couldn't have thought of anything to do but to listen even if I had tried, and occasionally pat his shoulder a little awkwardly.

His story had come in short staccato bursts rather than all at once. Whatever raw emotion had etched his face and shuddered through his lean figure at first had drained from him quickly, and now he just spoke in clipped tones, his face oddly blank. I began to think that I might have actually been the first person he ever told this to, I mean who else could he tell? Not his family, who were too young, and would be so worried and scared that they might try to wrongly convince him that he didn't need to do this. Not his friends who were too embarrassed and ashamed to see him after these terrible things had happened to him.

"I can't stand it," he said. "I feel dirty – all the time. My skin is constantly crawling and – it's just – it's _disgusting_. And the worst thing is, I have to pretend I _enjoy_ it. I have to pretend that this is just me. And maybe it is."

"It's not," I told him quietly. "The real you is in here." I placed the tip of my finger over his chest. He looked down, and his eyes seemed to linger on the spot where I had touched him even after I retracted my hand. "They can never take that away from you."

"Well, they sure as hell can try."

This was Finnick: a poor boy who had been forced to grow up too quickly. The Capitol really liked to add insult to injury, by the most extreme means imaginable. First they force you to tear your own soul apart with murder, and then they steal away from you the privacy of your own body. What was left, when all that was taken? And yet Finnick had been strong enough to cling onto his old self, and it was that part of him I had grown to respect and admire and … and what?

"I'm disgusting," he said grimly.

"No, you're not," I said. Somehow, at some point, we had moved closer together, so it was quiet easy for me to reach up and touch his hair, which was surprisingly soft. I gently took his hand because he was tugging furiously at his roots and I was scared he'd start ripping out his own hair and that would have been a shame. "You're not," I repeated softly.

"Yes I am," he insisted, gripping my hand tightly and forcefully holding my gaze. "You dislike me, don't you?"

"No, I don't," I resolved. "I said I was assessing you, and now I'm done. And I've concluded that I think you're completely lovely, Finnick. You're a lovely person in a terrible situation. I mean, in the space of about ten minutes you managed to obliterate every reason I had for ever disliking you." He scrutinised my face. "It's true," I said, smiling timidly at him. "Even before, I liked you so much that I had to mentally remind myself why I _shouldn't_ like you. But now, I've got nothing. Well, you do confuse me a little. And you make me spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about your secrets and stuff. But that's nothing. You confuse me, but I like you."

"You …?" he started faintly, and I felt myself begin to blush at my words. Hopefully he wouldn't think too much about exactly the sort of 'liking' I was talking about.

"I mean, I know it doesn't count for much," I added quickly, "but I definitely don't dislike you at all."

He sighed a little and looked up to meet my eyes closely. "That counts for plenty, Annie." He swallowed. "For some reason your opinion means a lot to me." I was just trying to figure out what that meant when he just said, "Hang on – _I_ confuse _you_? You're the crazy one who never makes any sense!"

"I told you before I'm not crazy," I said.

"Yeah, just mildly eccentric," he whispered, smirking at me. I grinned, but his frown quickly reappeared.

"But … I look at you and Lance and on the one hand I'm jealous, you know? Because you seem so much younger and it makes me feel like my innocence was just _ripped_ – right from me …" He clenched his teeth, looking pale and sick. "But on the other hand, I think of what would happen to you if you won." His eyes flicked up to meet mine. "Would you still want for Lance to win?"

I hadn't thought of that. If he won, would the exact same thing happen to Lance? I shuddered. Either way, it was happening to Finnick right now. "Well, would you rather be dead?" I asked. He cocked his head to one side and I quickly said, "Okay, don't answer that. But … You're a lot better looking than Lance, you know."

He rolled his eyes. "The curse of beauty, right?"

I looked down and realised that we were still holding hands. Finnick had big hands, the backs were sort of dry but his fingers and palms were smooth and calloused from a life of fishing. And they were warm, really warm. I found that I had no desire to let go.

I chewed my lip. He seemed to notice my distraction because he looked down at our hands as well, and carefully met my gaze. I tucked a chunk of hair behind my ear with my free hand and said, "Well, maybe. But you're also caring, and bright, and funny, and completely charming, and …" And how could I say flawless in every way without seeming insane?

His green eyes flicked between both of mine, and this close I could see the way they faded into a darker blueish teal towards the rims although the centres were such a bright green. I could almost see the waves of the ocean churning inside them. I swallowed slightly, and stole a glance at his lips before the flush of heat really broke across my cheeks.

He gave a small laugh and moved a bit away (thank goodness). "Okay, that's really sweet but you can stop trying to make me feel better now."

"I wasn't trying," I said resentfully. "I was just being honest."

"Well, that … doesn't help either," he said, giving a smaller version of the goofy grin. I shot him a questioning look and he just ran a hand through his hair and gestured towards me with the same sheepish smile. "Because that just means you're a genuinely sweet person. And …"

"And?"

He looked at me and pressed his lips together. "I … Nothing. Doesn't matter."

We both let go of each other's hands rather hastily, and I sat around and tried to control the hyperventilation that was threatening to take over my lungs.

Because it was just starting to diffuse into my brain. All this stuff about Finnick … It all just meant that the part of Finnick I had a crush on was the real Finnick! It was the other part that was the mask. And it was true what I had said: I had no reason at all to dislike him any more. And that meant that I didn't have to force myself not to like him, or feel bad about liking him. I didn't need to. I liked him. I liked him a _lot._

But … I was still going to be dead soon.

My eyes widened suddenly and I felt the weight of my heart grow rapidly. None of it mattered, after all. Not to me. Because, so what if I could like him now? What could I do about it?

And anyway, Finnick had his own problems without worrying about losing me. It was better if I meant nothing to him. Getting too close to me now was like getting too close to a grenade. Pretty soon, it would detonate and cause some serious damage. I'd like to minimise that damage while I still could.

"I guess love really has lost all meaning," I said.

"What did it ever mean?" Finnick asked darkly.

"I'd like to think it meant _something_," I said. "I like to think my parents love each other. And I know my grandparents do, even after so long. You can see it in their eyes. That's why old people are so wise, you know. Because even though there's pain in life, we all keep living because we hope to find love someday, and in the end that's what makes up for everything. Because of all the wars, and hate, and injustice in the world … as long as there's still love, we keep on fighting." Finnick was watching me closely and I lowered my eyes bashfully and rested my cheek against my palm. "At least that's what I think. And if that makes me naïve, or innocent or whatever …"

He didn't say anything, so I looked up and met his eyes. We were still sitting a little too close, but my bubble had been violated way back at the beginning of the conversation so it wasn't really bothering me. And he just contemplated me for a moment.

"That does make you naïve," he said eventually. "And you are very innocent." I wrinkled my brow, but all he did was smile his secret smile like he never had before, and he wet his lips slightly with his tongue before his face went suddenly serious. His eyes flashing, he met my gaze again. "Would it be really inappropriate if I were to kiss you right now?"

There are usually two different reactions that I (and most people, as far as I know) have in response to something completely shocking and unexpected. Sometimes I jump out of my seat with a startled yell, and probably knock something over. And other times I just go completely still and can't speak, and my eyes widen and I forget to breathe just a little bit.

Thankfully, it was the second reaction that I had at this particular moment in time.

When he said it, I went completely still and couldn't speak, and my eyes widened and I forgot to breathe just a little bit. And while this happened there were about a thousand questions running around my head and screaming at me for my attention. Where had this come from? What was he thinking? Did he really want to kiss me? Did I want to kiss him? Was he joking? Why would he joke about something like that? Had I brushed my teeth after dinner? And did I want to kiss him? Why would Finnick want to kiss me? Was he joking? Was he insane? Was he teasing me? Was this crush … mutual? Why on Earth would he want to kiss me? And once again, _did I want to kiss him_?

Admittedly, I did like him a lot. If possible, his admission of his secret life had only reinforced his good side, not only because it made me see who he really was but because it showed how deeply he cared for those he loved, and how tragic his circumstance was, and how, even though he looked as strong and beautiful as a god, he was only human after all.

So what was stopping me? Shouldn't I just go for it? I was going to be dead soon, after all. And I appeared to have the opportunity to spend the last few days of my life in a wild and unexpected love affair with Finnick Odair.

But despite all these thoughts and how completely perfect Finnick was in every way, when my mind finally cleared I found that all I could think was:

This is my mentor. And I'm going into the Hunger Games. And I am going to die. And all I can do is try my best to help Lance win.

Unfortunately, kissing Finnick was not going to make any of those things any easier.

And so, it was in the hope that he was joking that I smiled, and watched his lips as he grinned crookedly. I leaned my head back a bit, parted my lips slightly and began to close the distance between us. And just as our lips were almost touching and my heart was thumping frantically under my skin, I looked up into his beautiful green eyes and waited for him to meet my gaze. And when he did, with eyes flashing brightly, I said:

"Yes, it would."

That's when he went still, and stared at me for a long moment. Neither of us moved from that position, with our lips almost touching and all personal space bubbles that ever existed burst without mercy. For a second I thought he was going to kiss me anyway, and that made me nervous and full of dread and tingly all over with anticipation at the same time. But then he just dropped his eyes, swallowed and said, "Right."

We broke apart and he gave a short laugh. Then he was suddenly on his feet.

"Right," he said again, and strode quickly to the door.

I realised too late that I didn't want him to go. He was already in the doorway when I blurted out, "What, so … you realise the extent of my innocence and immediately get the uncontrollable urge to corrupt me? … Is that it?"

He stopped and turned, watching me closely with narrowed eyes. I don't know how long he just stood there, but it felt like ages. And then he said, "Quite the opposite, actually."

And then he was gone.

I slumped back on the couch, feeling even more confused than before, if that was even possible. I still adamantly believed I shouldn't have kissed him, though. Even if I wanted to. This was becoming dreadfully complicated, and I was just weaving a web of reasons that I didn't want to die, which was in no way helpful. As for Finnick, well I had no idea what he was thinking. He should realise that I was nothing more than a grenade.

He must have been joking. It was very hard to take Finnick seriously in a situation like that, even with my new-found knowledge that he wasn't as promiscuous as he appeared to be.

But what had he meant? What was the opposite of corrupting? … Purifying? Because that didn't make sense.

Or was it simply protecting me from corruption?

My heart wrenched as I looked back at the empty doorway. "Actually," I repeated in a whisper.

I almost actually wished I didn't actually have to actually die.


	12. Chapter 12

I've been totally obsessed with quoting things lately! Here's one I love, by J.D. Salinger whose name and works inspired my Esmé (and Holden too now that I think about it!):

_I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty … you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are._

**Chapter 12**

The next morning, there was a switching of roles at the breakfast table. As in, Finnick became the one doing all the staring, and I was the one avoiding his eye contact _at all costs._

Now, this was not a very easy thing to do. My lack of sleep was taking a toll on me more than usual and sometimes I'd forget myself, and I would glance around the table. His eyes were like magnets, and whenever mine would even glimpse past he would somehow force me to stop and meet his eyes for a split second, but that was enough to have my mind racing frantically and my face pinch up in annoyance at myself. It was with all my strength that I'd drag my gaze away again. Other times, I would think I was safe and I'd risk a peek at him (only to see if he was still staring, of course), and in an instant he would sense my stare and look around, a smile just forming on his lips before I had time to quickly avert my eyes again, blushing furiously.

When I was younger I used to fall a lot, and one time (shortly after I became friends with Lance), I fell over on the cobbles of the front square and smashed my lip open. It was kind of scary. I still have a teeny scar which you'd notice if you looked very closely, but not many people get that close to see it. And when I chew my lip I can feel it. It feels rather funny.

I was eating a grapefruit, and it left my mouth all sore and tingly. I had been biting my bottom lip in my sleep and now I had a small cut there, and what's more the skin on the inside of my lips was peeling a little.

This was all very distracting.

"What a day we have ahead of us today!" Esmé was saying cheerfully. She fluttered her long eyelashes at anyone who dared to make eye contact with her at the risk of being dragged into a conversation. "You've all had your fun for the last few days with your tribute-_ing_ and your mentor-_ing_, and now – it's my time to shine!"

Finnick, Lance and I all exchanged a look. Then I remembered I was trying not to look at Finnick so I just exchanged a look with Lance instead.

"Finnick, dear, who would you like to take first?"

I could feel his eyes boring into me as he paused before replying, "I haven't a preference."

"Oh, goodie!" she nattered on. "Why don't … Hm, let me see – what a tough decision-"

"It really makes no difference," Finnick assured her.

"I've got it! I'll take Annie for the morning, and you can have Lance. Then we'll switch over after lunch – how's that, pumpkin?"

I could picture Finnick's scowl even though I, of course, did not look up from my chocolate waffles. "Perfection," he said in a strained voice.

"Fine by me," agreed Lance agreeably, and I just made a weird noise in my throat which was taken by everyone to mean, "I also accept that decision most favourably."

Breakfast was finished rather hurriedly and then Esmé was up and pulling my chair out from me saying, "Come along now – No dawdling! We've got such a lot to do!"

I was sitting on my bed, glumly watching her flit about in front of me and chattering on about things I couldn't understand nor wanted to, until I heard her saying, "_Such_ a big job I have today! So to make sure we work as efficiently as possible, I have asked a very special someone to join us in our etiquette lesson! Can you-?"

"Is it Holden?" I asked.

She pursed her lips and blinked slowly at me. "I do wish you wouldn't interrupt me, sweetie."

So when she built up the big mystery guest for another few minutes, and then flung open the closet doors out of which jumped (can you even guess?) none other than my peach-faced, white-haired, over-excitable stylist, I pretended to be completely overwhelmed with surprise.

When Esmé said she wanted to work efficiently, she must have meant "with as much screeching and giggling and generally unproductive behaviour as possible." The morning was a complete waste, but I wasn't complaining since the alternative was sitting in close quarters with Finnick and trying to convince him to help me keep Lance alive and attempting not to concentrate on whatever desire I had, or he had, or we both had in relation to kissing and other types of affectionate behaviour.

Yes, the gruesome twosome were plenty good enough for me.

I already knew how to walk in high heels, because like a normal child I used to play dress-up a lot. I still played it sometimes, come to think of it. Grammy Moon was quite glamorous when she was young and beautiful. And Esmé taught me how to flutter my eyelashes prettily (which was exceedingly difficult and hurt my eyeballs after too long), and Holden had me reciting my Lance story again and again and training me to pause in the right places.

They showed me how to smile shyly/sadly/reminiscently/charmingly/breathtakingly, and the all time favourite – the fake tear dab. I was actually very good at making myself cry on cue, but I had no idea there were so many types of smiles and sniffles and sobs and laughs. Apparently my concentration was truly terrible and Esmé was constantly clicking her fingers in front of my face each and every time I got distracted. And no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't get me to wipe the dreaming, glazed look from my face. I tried to tell them that it was just my face and there was nothing anyone could do about it, but they still had me talking to myself in front of a mirror for an hour trying to show me all of my imperfections in stunning detail.

I began to just blatantly ignore them until they were forced to move on. My posture couldn't be improved and I was polite when I wasn't blurting things out off the top of my head, so we managed to finish up early and go for lunch. To our surprise, Finnick and Lance were also done with their session, and everyone was feeling rather pleased with themselves.

Except, of course, for the lingering sense of dread hanging over me at the thoughts of the afternoon, which caught up with me all too quickly.

You would think that Finnick might have been embarrassed or even mortified by my rejection last night, but you (like me) would be wrong about that. Because apparently, Finnick Odair's spirit could not be broken that easily. If possible, his spirit had been doubled and tripled in strength and embellished with even more charming smiles and flashing eyes and just … general … good looks and … and I could hardly stand it …

He was wearing a triumphant grin as Holden and Esmé got to their feet and were followed out the door by Lance.

"Please don't leave me," I whispered, gripping his arm as he ambled past.

Lance took a shrewd glance at Finnick and then looked back at me curiously. "Sorry, babe," he said, then grinned and jogged out of the door.

"What did you say to him?" I accused Finnick.

"Uh, lots of stuff," he said, knitting his brow. "You'll just have to wait 'til his interview to find out."

Finnick knew quite well that that was not what I meant. He knew it so well that I didn't even bother pointing it out. Now that everyone was gone, I felt quite at liberty to glare at him as much as I wanted. And that I did.

"Well …" he started slowly. "I'm going to have some coffee before we get started. Would you like anything?"

"No, thank you. I'm not allowed to have caffeine." He just looked at me so I added, "It makes me hyper."

"No kidding," he replied. There was a pause while he smiled pleasantly at me and I pouted back. "Shall we move this to the sitting room?"

He was grinning at me as if this was a real funny joke, so I just rolled my eyes and went into the other room. I sat down on the comfy couch and he dragged an armchair around to face me directly. He held his mug in both his hands and blew at the brown liquid, eyeing me over the top of it. I stared stubbornly back at him. This went on silently for ages, until he had finished his drink and had put it down on the nearest end table (and that was quite a while later because he hadn't even rushed it down or anything).

"Why are you staring at me?" he asked.

"Why are _you_ staring at _me_?" I replied.

"I asked you first."

"We're not children, Finnick."

"Well then you should stop acting like one."

I frowned and looked away. "… You don't want to hear it," I sighed.

I glanced back at him to see him grinning. "You realise that saying something like that only makes me even more desperate to know?"

I sighed again, more tiredly this time. For a moment I just surveyed him before answering.

"You're beautiful, you know." His eyebrows raised slightly and I said, "Well, of course you know, that was a stupid thing to say. But my point is …" I stared at him for a bit longer while I tried to figure out what my point was. "My point is: I'm going to die soon. And I decided a while ago that I shouldn't deny myself the simple pleasure … of appreciating something beautiful when it sits so audaciously in front of me."

He kept my eye contact easily, calmly. "And when you say you decided this a while ago, you mean since lunchtime when you were refusing to look at me."

I nodded, slightly embarrassed. "I do."

I thought he had finally cracked, because he looked down … only to look back up again quickly with that amused glint in his eyes and a sideways smile. "Well, that's a bit of a coincidence," he said, "because that's exactly the same reason I had for staring at _you_."

I made a noise somewhere in between a "What?" and a "Heh?" so it sounded a bit like, "Wheh?"

He only grinned wider. "Except I was being more romantic about it, of course. Because it's specifically _you_ that's the beautiful thing I want to be looking at. And I'm not the one about to die. I'll be sure to see plenty more beautiful things in my life."

"Are you bragging about that?" I asked in annoyance.

"No," he said plainly, "I'm just saying that I'm not exactly sure why it bothers me so much to think about not having the pleasure of seeing you any more."

"Well, that's not true. You can catch me on screen. You can buy the DVD. You can-"

"You're not hearing me."

"Yes, I am. You think I'm beautiful. You have a staring problem. It's very rude, actually."

"Annie, you're not _listening _to me."

"Yes, I am! But I don't understand what you're saying!"

"How can you not understand it?" he asked loudly. "How can you possibly be that clueless?"

I glared angrily at him, and he glared angrily back.

"It's infuriating, you know." He looked me over, sitting back in his seat and crossing his arms. "Your smile is a bit too wide for your face, did you know that?" I knit my brow, frowning deeply at him. But he just wet his lips and continued on. "You've got a stupid looking calf-lick that messes up your bangs. Your eyes have a constant puppy dog look, and you've got this dewy-eyed, childlike exterior until you start spouting all this self-professed ancient wisdom about life and death and true love … And you touch your lips when you're nervous." I instantly dropped my hand, and refrained from biting them. Finnick just sighed. "It's driving me crazy."

I looked down, frowning. "Well, I'm sorry. If it bothers you that much I'll stop. I'll break the habits. I'll stop speaking. I'll shave off all my hair and get facial reconstructive surgery and-"

He just closed his eyes and rubbed his brow wearily. "And you seriously don't get it," he muttered. He sat up suddenly and leaned forwards in his chair, meeting my eyes sincerely. "I mean, this stuff shouldn't bother me as much as it does. I shouldn't even be _noticing_ it, really. But here I am, and there you are. And you're totally, undeniably, _irresistibly_ oblivious to me." He folded his arms again and slouched back into the armchair.

There was a lengthy moment where I just sat there and tried to understand what he was saying. And it wasn't because I was 'clueless' or because he was using too many words; it was because he wasn't making any sense whatsoever. He was really quite an idiot.

"Oblivious?" I repeated. "You think I'm oblivious to you?"

"Yeah, and indifferent. I forgot that one."

Finnick was on my mind way too much for me to be indifferent to him. And if I was oblivious to him, I don't think it would have entered my head to even begin to conceive the idea of dreaming to postulate the thoughts of imagining a day when he might just be on my mind at all in the first place.

That was all a bit of a mouthful, so I just said, "I'm not indifferent to you, Finnick. And I'm certainly not oblivious."

"But do you get what I'm saying?"

"You …" I chewed my lip thoughtfully. I had this immense feeling of foreboding, like we were on the brink of something really _wow_ here. If only I knew what it was. It was on the tip of my tongue. "It's on the tip of my tongue," I said quietly.

"I like you, Annie."

…

…

… I could feel the waves rushing in my ears.

"I don't know why, but I do. Maybe I only want what I can't have, but I don't think that's it. I feel like one of those women who dates married men, and they go to see an analyst and the analyst tells them that they seek out relationships that will only end in pain and despair and reinforcing the notion they've had all along that love is shit and they'll never find anyone, just so they can go moaning to an analyst and feel all very sorry for themselves. But I don't think that's it either. Like, I think that this is something more special than some weird trick my mind plays on me. I think it's just … that if things were normal, and it was at all possible, I'd just like to … _like_ you. You know what I mean?"

I knew exactly what he meant. But a tidal wave had ripped through me and I didn't respond.

"Did you expect this?"

"I … did not expect this," I replied. I looked up at him, and to be honest he was looking fairly relaxed about the whole thing. If things were normal, it might have been different. If things were normal, he might have been more embarrassed, because my response would largely affect the course of our future relationship, or lack of one. If things were normal, I might have felt more of a need to return his declaration of affection. If things were normal, I might have felt rather pleased that he felt the same way. But things were not normal, and Finnick knew that neither my feelings nor his own mattered in the slightest in the long-run, and I knew that this only complicated things further.

I mean, I was pleased that he liked me, but the situation wasn't at all pleasing.

I kind of wanted to cry.

Just to let him know what was going through my head, I said, "Things aren't normal."

I didn't look up, but heard him sigh. "And you're not going to respond at all, are you?"

"Didn't I just?" I asked. "I said, things aren't normal."

And he just said, "Oh." Because that seemed to be equivalent to me saying, "I like you too, but things aren't normal and none of this even matters anyway." If I was clueless then Finnick was the opposite of that. He didn't need me to spell it out for him. He knew. I knew he knew because next he asked, "But then why didn't you let me kiss you last night?"

"Because it's too complicated and none of this matters anyway," I muttered.

I looked up and our eyes locked. Nothing more needed to be said.

Finnick, Finnick, went to sea;  
Silver buckles on his knee.  
He'll be back to marry me!  
How many days 'til he gets back?

One – two – three – ffff-

Finnick Odair is bright and fair,  
Combing down his ging- uh, not-at-all ginger hair!  
He's my love forever more!  
How many days 'til he gets back?

Finnick had his lips pursed in a half-smile, half-frown. "That's seriously depressing when you think about it."

"Sorry," I said, and switched to a new song.

Down in the valley where the green grass grows,  
Sat little Annie, sweet as a rose.  
She sang, she sang, she sang so sweet.  
Along came a boy and kissed her on the cheek.  
How many kisses did he give her?

I had barely formed the 'wuh' sound of the beginning of the word 'one', when Finnick attacked me. He threw me back on the couch and held my face in his hands, kissing my cheeks, my forehead, my eyes, my nose, saying, "One – two – three – ffff-!" between each of his kisses. He was so strong, it was a moment before he even heard the protests I was yelling loudly into his ear. I managed to pull my head around and his last kiss caught me on the corner of my mouth, and I trembled before finally shouting, "Stop it, Finnick!"

He stopped, but didn't move even an inch away. He just screwed up his eyebrows in bewilderment as his eyes ran all over my face. "What's wrong? I – I thought that was an invitation!"

"It – I don't know any more! But I can't kiss you, Finnick. I can't do it."

He paused, grinning cheekily. "Meaning I can kiss you?"

"No, we can't kiss each other. Okay?"

"Mixed messages, Annie!" But he still backed away from me, to my utmost relief. "Okay, okay. But … I mean, why not?"

The way I could see it, I was going to die and I had two options about how to spend the remainder of my life. One: I could waste no time and spend every moment kissing Finnick and having a grand old time. Or two: I could actually put my time to good use, by means of utilising it to learning how to stay alive as long as I could in the arena, and in doing so keeping Lance alive as long as I could.

Clearly, Finnick was thinking of the first option. He probably hadn't even considered the second.

"Because I'm confused and it's complicated and I'm going to die and I need your help," I said quickly. He looked at me and I looked sadly back. "Finnick, in twenty-four hours I could be dead."

He pursed his lips slightly. "And I'll have to watch every second of it," he said. I shivered, and we looked at each other with sickly expressions for a minute or two. Then he sucked in a great big breath and said, "Yeah, I see what you mean. That's pretty complicated. No kissing."

He stood up, turned his back on me and folded his arms. "I know it's hard because you find me so irresistible, but you're just gonna have to get over it. No matter how much you want it, no matter how much you beg or threaten me, I'm not letting you kiss me. These lips are off limits, you hear? Okay, good. Now that's that."

He sat back down in his chair, crossed his ankle over his knee and contemplated me.

"So, your interview. You're gonna talk about Lance. Lance …" He trailed off thoughtfully.

I frowned. "You got over that real quick."

"Yeah, I'm just gonna have to keep talking or else I'll start realising how bad I want you, and how I want you even badder because you're so freaking amazing at playing hard to get. And how it kills me to realise that you simply _are_ hard to get. So excuse me while I babble like an idiot for the next few hours."

And so he did.

And so a few hours later I was stepping out of the elevator with Holden, who was wearing a ruffled shirt and tight black pants with strappy leather boots, and had two electric blue stripes across each of his cheeks making him look like some sort of insane pop-star tribesman. We joined the others in the hallway, Esmé wearing a long, flowing blue dress and a very showy sash across her shoulder which read 'ESCORT', and which I believed I had never seen any other escort wear, making it – like most of Esmé's fashion choices – completely unnecessary.

Lance was wearing a bright blue suit made of a shimmery material, with matching blue tie and a white shirt that was slightly creased and tinted so that it looked like waves. But of course, it was my dress that they had gone all out for.

I was wearing a long blueish green gown that was tied up my back with ribbons, sucking in everything and forcing out a beautiful hourglass shape despite the fact that my body clearly wasn't happy to do that at all. I mean, I wasn't fat but my waist simply wasn't that narrow. That's where my ribs got in the way, but the dress didn't care. My arms and shoulders were bare and golden, my hair tumbling over my left shoulder in loose curls and half tied together in a plait with more ribbons. On my wrist was the pearl bracelet my Grammy had given me, and the green ribbon from the reaping I had tied through it. My nails had been painted with glitter and I had more of the stuff all over my face and chest. From my waist the dress sprung out in thick layers of blue fabric that sparkled just like sunlight on water. The front of the dress only came down as far as my knees but the back trailed out behind me in a foamy, bubbling white train, making me feel like I was being engulfed by a crashing wave, which I think was the whole point.

Esmé disappeared to talk to some of the other escorts about important escort business, and Holden did not look happy to be left by the wayside. Then Finnick appeared, wearing a classic black suit with a dark green shirt made of the same shimmery sort of material as Lance's, the first few buttons of which were undone.

He looked at us and gave us a bored sort of, "Hey," and then he looked at me again and did a double take. "_Wow_," he said breathlessly. "I mean, Annie … You … _Wow_."

"This dress does not like my lungs and is doing everything it can to shut them up once and for all," I said, having lost my breath for a different reason entirely.

"You look sweet," he replied.

"Excuse me," Lance said edgily. Finnick looked at him as he put his hands on his hips. "What about me?"

"Very dashing," laughed Finnick. He brought his attention back to me. "How do you feel?"

I rubbed my ribcage which felt like it was being crushed into a fine powder. "Like I'm drowning." I looked down at myself, and winced as I tried to inhale and almost popped the seams of the dress. "Seriously," I gasped, "I can't breathe in this stupid thing."

Finnick had instantly turned around and grabbed Holden by the scruff and dragged him over to us. "Can't you do something about this?"

Holden rubbed his chin and tapped his boots and scanned me up and down with a very professional look. "Nope. No way. No can do. Not a chance. Nada, darling. You just have to suck it up." And then, without even trying to lower his voice, he went up on his tiptoes to say into Finnick's ear, "It's for the breasts, you know. She's got about as much sex appeal as a chipmunk if we loosen it. You understand, don't cha?"

Finnick and Lance both stared blatantly at my stylist. Apparently they didn't understand, or else they did understand but were taking the words as personal insults. I couldn't have cared less, I just wanted out of that dress.

Holden looked between all of us and began to laugh a stupid tittering laugh. "Hey, I'm just working with what I'm given," he said, poking Finnick's chest. Between the two strong, well-built teenagers, the little man was looking very skinny and shrimpy. And yet he still continued to provoke them. "I'm doing all I can to get the audience's attention. Why, you're the one who won't even let them be in love! That's the one thing that would guarantee a bucket of sponsors and we're not even taking advantage of it!"

"Yeah, because we don't want to!" said Lance.

"Oh, who cares about what you _want_?" groaned Holden, rolling his eyes. "It's all for the drama – the action – the romance! Don't you want to give the audience what we want?"

The three of us were glaring at him now. It was the way he said 'we' …

"We're more concerned with keeping someone alive," Finnick growled dangerously.

"Same difference," sneered Holden. "Somebody lives every year, but we don't always get a good story like this." None of us said anything. "You district people just don't understand, do you? Sometimes you want a bit more _oomph_ than just blood, although I can't deny-"

We never got to hear what Holden couldn't deny, because at that moment Finnick turned away slightly as if to walk off in anger, and then spun back around and punched Holden straight in the face. I gave a small shriek as Holden flailed his arms dramatically and fell to the floor. Finnick just looked at his hand, and then at me and Lance.

"Oops," he said. "I'd better head off now – good luck!" And then he touched my arm gently and grinned at us before sprinting away.

"Lance," I said, watching Finnick disappear into the crowds of tributes and stylists and mentors and escorts, "what would you say if I told you I was in love with Finnick Odair?"

"Right now," he said, looking down at the various people surrounding Holden as he held his bloodied nose with the frilly sleeve of his now ruined white shirt, "I really wouldn't blame you."

I smiled to myself.

Esmé was back, and sobbing Holden's name as he was carried off by two members of my prep team. Their two tributes who were due on stage at any moment were completely forgotten. The last thing we heard from the stylist was, "Finnick Odair punched me in the face. That was so _awesome._ Did it look awesome? It felt … awesome."

"What a despicable little man," said Lance, and I agreed with him. Then he turned to my back. "Here, let's see that dress of yours."

I sighed in relief as he untied the ribbons and loosened them out again. I didn't need sex appeal, and I rather liked chipmunks anyway.

We were being told to line up, and Juliet walked passed us, her bright red hair tied up in a fan around her head and laced with pure white flowers.

"Looks like District Four is getting all the action," she drawled, smirking pointedly at Lance.

I only thought of my almost-kisses with Finnick and began to laugh out loud. She shot me a withering look and swooped gracefully over to Laertes.

"Yeah, we've plenty action to go around," replied Lance, taking my hand and following them.

Just before we paraded out onto the stage, Lance turned to me with a serious look and whispered, "We could still do it, you know. Pretend we're in love. Holden may be cruel and insensitive, but maybe he's right."

"But pretending we're in love – wouldn't we have to kiss and stuff?"

"So what? I've kissed you before."

"Yeah, when we were fourteen," I said, rolling my eyes.

"We know it doesn't necessarily mean anything," he said, catching a stray piece of hair and tucking it behind my ear. His hand rested on my shoulder, and his eyes never left mine.

I pressed my lips together. "Do you really want to spend what could be the last days of your life being untrue to yourself?"

His eyes lingered on my face for a moment, and then he looked at his feet. "Okay, we won't do it."

"Lance-" I started.

He just took my hand again and squeezed it. "We won't do it."

It was with aching hearts that we stepped out onto the stage, into blinding lights and buzzing atmosphere. I tried to remember all the smiles that Esmé and Holden had taught me, I really did, but it was as if my smiling muscles had stopped working and all I could do was gaze sadly at Lance as he let go of my hand so that we could sit down in our seats.

I could barely use any weapon. I couldn't be sexy or charming or appealing in any way. I couldn't even bring myself to pretend I was in love with him in order to get us as many sponsors as possible. And since we had come to the Capitol I had spent most of my time finding distractions and constantly having to remind myself that looking out for Lance was on what I should have been concentrating my efforts. But how in the world was I planning to do that, when my efforts were so completely useless?

I looked out into the crowd and managed to find Finnick, sitting in a corner which was conveniently lit with bright lights. I knew that was so the cameras could locate him easily, just to show his face on the screens to please, well, everyone. He had already been watching me, and he gave a slight, sad smile.

Finnick wasn't useless. Finnick was keeping us alive. And Lance had to stay alive if he was trying to protect me. So if we both stayed alive as long as we could, then all I had to do … was _die_.

I reached over and snatched Lance's hand back up, grinning widely around at the crowd. I hardly listened to the first few tributes' interviews. Juliet, apparently, had lost her boyfriend to the Games last year and was following him into the arena to either avenge him or join him in death. Laertes, too, had some vague plot for vengeance, but his voice was almost hypnotic and all I got out of it was that he had some serious daddy issues. Eve was some sort of cruel temptress, and seemed intent on bringing everyone down with her. And Saul was firm in his belief that it was his duty to personally persecute and punish the children of the districts (those from 2 were always sucking up to the Capitol).

The two from 3 (whose names were constantly slipping my mind) finished up, and then it was my turn.

I walked as daintily as I could towards Caesar, the interviewer whose hair and lips were a bright sunny yellow this year. I decided to really play up the cutesy, innocent girl thing, because apparently I was a natural.

"It's the little mermaid! And oh, isn't she just the sweetest," Caesar simpered cocking his head to the side and tapping his thighs. "Hello, Annie! How are you feeling tonight?" he asked, shaking my hand.

How was I feeling? Hm, good question.

"Well … I can't exactly breathe very well right now," I replied honestly.

Laughter. Unsure laughter, but still. "Oh, come now. There's no need to be nervous," Caesar said. "We're all-"

"Oh, it's not that I'm nervous," I said matter-of-factly, "it's just this dress. I feel like I'm drowning."

I knew the cameras cut off to Holden now, and I located him at the front of the crowd, in a fresh shirt and with his nose powdered so you could hardly tell he had just been punched. I waved cheerfully at him and he stood up and took multiple extravagant bows and curtsies.

"It's especially horrific, you know, because I'm afraid of the water," I continued on to Caesar, making my eyes very wide.

The crowd was absolutely gushing. He placed one hand on his cheek and said, "My, my – from District 4 and afraid of the water? You poor little dear!"

Of course, this was my time to tell a very brief account of what happened to my parents, and by the time I got to say that the only thing that kept me from infinite sadness was my loving grandparents and, most importantly, my best friend in the whole wide world, the crowd had turned to mush in the palm of my hand.

I refused to do the fake tear dab. I absolutely refused. But just thinking about it my eyes were beginning to water, so it wasn't really fake at all. I just managed to get out a quick, dramatic, "Best friend … and fellow tribute!" before I almost completely choked up.

"Yes, how truly awful," said Caesar with a sympathetic shake of his head. "I think we all remember your reaping. Care to tell us what was going through your head?"

I stopped, horrified, and blurted out, "I didn't _really_ want to see Finnick Odair in his underwear – it's just a song!"

There was a brief silence, and then everyone was bursting out laughing. I looked over at Finnick. He winked at me.

Someone was shouting for me to sing the song, and I looked at Caesar. "I was actually talking about your feelings on being reaped with your best friend … Oh, but why not?"

And I sang:

Finnick, Finnick, went to sea;  
Silver buckles on his knee.  
He'll be back to marry me!  
How many days 'til he gets back?

I stopped quickly, realising I had sung the wrong verse. So I started again:

Finnick Odair is bright and fair,  
Combing down his ginger hair!  
He's my love forever more!  
How many days 'til he gets back?

Oh no! I did it again! Hurriedly, I continued as smoothly as I could as my heart skipped and quivered.

Finnick Odair is bright and fair,  
Combing down his ginger hair!  
He'll be mine to love and care;  
Finnick Odair in his underwear!

I grinned at Finnick as I sang it, and he held his hand up to his face and waved the cameras away as if he was embarrassed.

"We all know, Finnick!" Caesar shouted out to him. And then bellowed to the audience, "Am I right?"

They were going wild. I smiled to myself. People loved Finnick. Finnick wanted to keep us alive. Therefore, people would be rooting for us. So maybe I couldn't pretend to be in love with Lance, but I could still win sponsors for the two of us.

"Now, in all seriousness, Annie," Caesar began solemnly, "what about the reaping? How did you feel when your name was called?"

"I … I didn't really feel anything," I said thoughtfully. I chewed my lip. "It didn't really dawn on me until …"

I looked over at Lance in his chair, who was immersed in examining his own hands. Then I realised I hadn't finished my sentence and knew Esmé and Holden would surely kill me after specifically telling me _not_ to do that. I spun back around to Caesar but he was already saying, "Until Lance was reaped, too?"

Thinking this was probably okay, I nodded sadly.

"And then … what was that like for you?" he prompted gently.

"It was …" I was going to say it was indescribable but that was no use at all so I said, "I can hardly describe it. It's like … I knew that I'd either be coming back without him or not coming back at all. It was like part of me died right there. It was like my heart had been shattered and then locked back up inside my chest. It was like a piece of my soul was lost forever with that tiny scrap of paper."

But of course, it was really much worse than that. They say indescribable for a reason, you know.

The interview ended shortly after that, but I had nothing left to say anyway. The story of how we met was cute but completely irrelevant. I hadn't talked about Lance as much as I had planned to, but there was still his interview for that. All I could do was sit and watch as he got up and strolled up to Caesar with his hands in his pockets, smiling a strained smile at the cameras.

First, Caesar just linked his fingers together and blew out a long whistle.

"I know," said Lance, looking forlornly around at the crowd.

"I won't bother asking how you're feeling, said Caesar softly. "I think we're all a little torn up after that."

"Very poetic, isn't she?" Lance observed, and the crowd gave a general hum of consent. It took me a moment to realise he meant me.

"I'll say," agreed Caesar. "This feels just like one long interview, doesn't it? But we've heard her side. So tell us, Lance. At the reaping, what was going through your head?"

"Annie's name got called," he said quietly. He didn't even need to try, the audience were already waiting on his every word. "I watched her walk up there with that dreamy look on her face, you know the one … And I just knew. I knew I couldn't let her come here all on her own."

Heads were turning, everywhere there were hushed murmurs of confusion.

"And – and then your name got called?" Caesar continued.

Lance just shrugged. "I would have volunteered anyway."

"You would have?"

"Yeah, of course. How else could I make sure she came out of this alive?" He looked around, raising his voice now, smiling charmingly around as he joked, "I mean, you're a great guy Finnick, but there's only so much you can do for her on the outside!"

So Lance knew it too, to keep reminding the crowd that we were Finnick's people and that they wanted to like us as much as they liked him. Caesar was saying, "And you'll be on the inside-?"

"Doing everything I can, yeah," he said.

Caesar gave another low whistle. "Well, Lance, I've got to say something that I think everyone here is wondering about." Lance looked around, raising his eyebrows expectantly. But I was pretty sure he knew what was coming. "Isn't there only a certain length you'd go for a friendship? I mean to say, are you sure that Annie doesn't mean something _more_ to you than that?"

Lance ran a hand through his hair, messing it up so he looked more like the five year old with a juice stain on his shirt that I once knew. He looked over and met my eyes, and I wondered for a moment if he was going to run with this love thing after all.

"Caesar, Annie is the sort of person that brightens the world just by her presence in it," he said. "She can bring a smile to your face without even trying, and she's hilarious without knowing it. I always mistake her for being an optimist just because she manages to see the light in the darkest things. She is everything that is pure and wonderful in the world. And a world where she doesn't exist is not a world I'd like to be a part of."

Lance was a complete bullshitter, if you'll please excuse the rather rude turn of phrase. How could I be a bright and sunny person if I went back to District 4 with a dead best friend, parents who I'd never see again, and the terrors of the arena screwing up my mind?

"It actually reminds me of something our escort, Esmé, said to us the first evening on the train," Lance was continuing. The cameras found Esmé, who was looking completely taken aback that she was being appreciated. "She told us how we were lucky, in a way, to have each other to go through this with. Not everyone gets to have their best friend with them to make this experience slightly more enjoyable. And we've met some really great people here." His eyes lingered over the District 1 tributes, and I found myself smiling, too. Lance looked back at Caesar and said quietly, "I'm really glad I got to share this with her."

"… You're sure?" asked Caesar. "You're sure you're not just in love with her?"

"She wouldn't have me anyway," Lance replied, shaking his head. And then _he_ told the story of how we first met, but changing the protagonist to be the boy with the messy blonde hair instead of the girl with eyes the size of saucers (his description, not mine), and turning bright red when he talked about how he had asked me to be his girlfriend.

"I still have the bracelet she made me," he said, showing his wrist and a very tattered string of real shells and fake plastic ones, which for the first time I realised was Lance's token for the Games. "Sadly, the daisy chain didn't survive."

There were a few sympathetic chuckles.

"And you didn't even ask her out again?" Caesar asked incredulously. These Capitol people were so alike with their stupid romances, because that was exactly what Holden had asked me.

"Well …" Lance started slowly, looking down and fiddling with his bracelet as his face turned maroon again. "I did kiss her, once."

"Ooooh, do tell!" said Caesar.

Lance met my eyes across the stage and grinned, and I had to stop myself from laughing out loud.

"Well, it was New Years a couple years ago, and we were at this party that Annie has every year in her house. And I had just been through this awful ordeal with a girl from school, and it made me wonder if maybe, I dunno, if maybe I liked Annie … And we were just sitting outside on the sand when the countdown got to zero. So …" He shrugged. "I kissed her."

I dearly hoped that the audience would take my shaking shoulders to mean I was overwhelmed with sadness at the tear-jerking memories, and not that I was trying not to burst out laughing.

"And?"

"And then I said … Annie, there's something I have to tell you."

Lance was smiling slightly and his eyes were wet. Anyone that didn't know Lance would probably think he was upset but putting on a brave face, but I knew very well that he was trying not to grin as much as I was and the strain of not laughing was tearing him up.

"And then what happened?" pushed Caesar.

"And then …" Lance finally looked away from me and said to Caesar, "And then her granddad came out and slapped me upside the head."

This got a big laugh and I let myself grin and then cover my mouth with my hand to laugh.

"And what was it that you needed to tell her? That you were in love with her?" Caesar was asking hurriedly, but just as Lance opened his mouth to reply, the bell rang and Lance's time was up. I almost laughed again at how perfectly he had timed it, as Lance got up and shook Caesar's hand, shrugging and waving at the audience as they shouted and screamed and begged for the answer to The Ultimate Question.

And that was it. The romance between me and Lance was completely up in the air – and we would probably pay for it in the arena, but right now I couldn't have cared less.

Just to make things a bit more confusing for them, I ran up and hugged him just before he got to his chair. And he kissed my cheek for good measure.

Although I did not approve of Lance saying he would volunteer, I still had to admit that this had all been a lot better with him here. If he hadn't been here I would have fallen apart long ago. This feeling wouldn't last, of course, because in the arena I'd hardly be _thankful_ he was there with me. But in my own selfish ways I kind of would be, if not thankful, then at least appreciative that at least we had each other. For a short time, anyway.

The rest of the interviews seemed to go by in a blur, with names and stories and personalities whirling past in a haze. It hit me again how ridiculously and idiotically Lance had portrayed me, because all I could think was that twenty-three of these kids were going to die, leaving twenty-three families in despair, not to mention friends and whole districts, and that was definitely not optimistic.

The only bright side of this I could think of was that my death would affect as few people as possible. Lance, maybe, but only if he won. My Grammy and GaGa, although they were so old and wise that they knew death was nothing to be scared of. After that … Finnick? I didn't even know how serious he was. So he had a crush, big deal. He'd get over it.

No, the casualties of this little grenade would be fewer than for any other of the twenty-three children that stood around me here on this night. That was about as much of a positive spin as I could make of this.

So as I sat and tried to do them the honour of listening to their desperate attempts to win some attention, all I really did was say a little grace for each name, some I had never bothered to learn, as I heard them.

Joulie. Columb. Georgina. Tarquin. Acacia. Jack. Hesper. Gamp. Polly. Edmund. Bessie. Cowser. Cam. Rubi. Rose. Axl. Juliet. Laertes. Saul. Eve. And of course, the two from 3 that I hadn't even the decency to listen to before.

I'm very sorry for all your troubles, and may your deaths not be too horrendous.

Oh, and Lance too! I almost forgot … But hopefully not.

And I'm very sorry about that, too.

* * *

AN:

Bet you can't guess where all those names come from!

I wanted to update sooner than this but hopefully the longer chapter makes up for it! Although I'm thinking of splitting it up, maybe too much happens all at once … I didn't want to completely overshadow the FinnickXAnnie of the chapter, but then I realised that they had no choice but to just get on with things so maybe it's all very meaningful … Let me know what you think! :D

You reviewers are just amazing, I love every single one of you :)


	13. Chapter 13

Okay, so after this chapter, I really really really need to think about what happens next in this story. Yes, the Games and stuff, but I really want to write the whole 'insane' thing very well and I'll need to do a lot of thinking … So thanks for reading so far and please please please give a review :) Also, if you can, please go to my profile and vote on my new poll for when I should end this story. I can't help but know that it won't be a happy ending, because no matter what happens in the middle, I can't ignore that this relationship does not end happily ever after. Bittersweet, I can do. But I'd like to know what y'all think.

Anyway, I appreciate all your support, I'm so pleased with the response this story has gotten so far! :D

Allons-y!

* * *

_Give me a long kiss goodnight,_

_And everything will be all right._

_Tell me that I won't feel a thing._

– _Give Me Novacaine, Green Day_

* * *

**Chapter 13**

My Last Night on Earth was … nice. My Last Night on Earth was what I was calling my last night of living in relatively normal conditions, in a relatively peaceful environment, and not fighting for my relative life. The arena was metaphorically alien. My Last Night of True Normality was way back, the night before the reaping a hundred years ago. And my Last Night of Existence would be the night my heart stopped beating.

But I still thought of this as a milestone. And it was nice. I used to think that nice was such a phony word. Who wants to be called nice? When kids call you _nice_ it means that they have no desire to be your friend and most likely know nothing about you, if all they can say is nice. When a boy calls you _nice_ it means he thinks you're an okay gal but he either finds you unattractive or uninteresting or generally unappealing in some other way. When a teacher calls you _nice_ it means you are not specifically talented in any way whatsoever but at least you're mostly harmless. That, or all the kids and boys and teachers you know are extremely unimaginative in their word choices.

When an evening is nice it means you neither had a fantastic time nor a terrible time. It was just nice.

But sometimes, nice is nice. You know?

We sat around and had dinner, and Finnick, Lance and I all chatted and laughed like old friends. Of all things I could have been worried about at that moment – death, murder, prostitution – I almost felt sorry for Finnick because we were his friends, and he was going to lose us and go back to District 4 where everyone outside of his family walked on eggshells around him. That's not a literal phrase, by the way. I hoped that if Lance won, he'd be true to his offer of hanging around with our mentor.

My Last Meal on Earth was an assortment of smaller dishes; a juicy, medium rare steak with red wine sauce, peppers stuffed with mince and spicy meatballs covered in cheese. Esmé ordered a few large jugs of a cocktail they called Sex on the Beach, which we all had a good laugh about (Lance's and mine were virgins, but not in the usual sense of the word).

Holden didn't say much, but I wasn't bothered by him. As well as being a despicable little man, he was also a bit of a jerk. And to think, he had once made me think better of Esmé! Now I had a heck of a lot more nice things to say about her than him.

Then we all went into the sitting room and watched the interviews, and it was all so cheesy and revolting but there was no point being embarrassed about it. I had the same desire I had towards the end of Lance's story about our kiss – to laugh. At this Holden piped up, seeming to think that he had gotten through to us after all about our false romance. But it was not for the entertainment of the viewers that we did it. If we were going to die then we might as well have some fun while we were at it. And torturing the Capitol citizens with the promises of a good love story only to hugely disappoint them was all too entertaining, and all too easy.

Sitting in the same positions as the previous night, I curled up and put my feet in Finnick's lap. He glanced sideways at me, grinning like a total goofball.

Goodbyes had to be said, but to be honest they mean more to them than us. When I'm dead I'll hardly be worrying about the last things I said to Esmé, Holden and Sheaney.

Sheaney wished us a quiet but heartfelt good luck. Holden pulled meticulously at his sleeves, then smoothed the creases in his shirt and said, "Well, do try make it a good show, won't you?" With a quick glance at our faces his eyes turned downcast and he added a bashful, "If it were me and Esmé, it would be totally not awesome. I hope you don't … Oh, just good luck, guys, okay?" And then he stomped off, seeming almost angry with himself for having a bit of decency for once.

"Did Holden just show _empathy_?" I asked incredulously.

"The world has officially gone mad," said Lance.

"Don't give him too much credit," sighed Finnick. "I had a few words with him, actually."

I mouthed "actually" and he gave me a sly little wink.

Esmé gave a small little _"Hem," _holding a poised hand delicately over her lips. She took each of our hands (but not Finnick's, because she only had two hands), and said, "It was a true joy to meet a pair of charming, well-spoken and pleasant looking young adults such as yourselves."

"Well … thank you, Esmé," said Lance.

She positively beamed at him, and then rushed off a little hysterically, blushing beneath her white powder and muttering something about sharing experiences while fixing her 'ESCORT' sash.

Then the three of us stood in the hallway for a while, giving random reminders of what our plan was in low, clipped voices. Finnick felt that we'd have more than enough sponsors, but that he would be sending us more than just gifts. The gifts would also be hints, for instance if he sent us bread it meant we were relatively safe and should catch up on energy, but if he sent us weapons it meant we were in danger. I wondered if we'd really have enough sponsors to be thinking like that, but Finnick seemed pretty convinced. He got the most expensive gifts, after all.

Lance and I went through our plan over and over: I was to run away from the bloodbath, in the direction of the sun if I could see it and towards water if I couldn't. Lance would follow me after he had grabbed a few weapons. I wasn't exactly happy with leaving him, but it was all we could do. We mightn't be anywhere near each other around the Cornucopia, and he was a good fighter anyway.

Hopefully, everything would work out.

Finnick hugged us both and Lance and I shared our goodbyes with him. He ruffled Lance's hair, touched my cheek, and without another word went to his room. At his door, he turned around. With one glimpse of his eyes I knew he'd be joining me later on the comfy sofa in the sitting room for the Very Last Time.

Lance and I stood hugging in the hallway for a long time. I felt like I would literally fall to pieces if he didn't stay holding me there, keeping me together.

"This is so silly," he said wetly, pulling away slightly and looking into my eyes. "I mean, I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah, but not on Earth," I replied.

In the end, we tore ourselves from each other's arms and said goodnight.

I had the quickest shower of my life, just washing off the glitter and then sitting on the edge of my bed for an hour or two.

Indecision was tearing my mind apart. Should I stay or should I go? To Finnick, I mean. I wanted to see him. Of course I did. But how could I say goodbye to him? Forever? Maybe it would be easier for both of us if I just stayed in my room and tried to sleep instead. My heart wrenched at the thought of him waiting out there for me, and me never showing my face. Would he even care? Would he simply come knocking at my door, refusing to let me leave him like this?

I shuddered to think of causing him pain, when he had already been hurt so much in the past. But which would be the better pain; not seeing each other one last time or letting ourselves get deeper into this affair only to increase the hurt when it ended?

Yes, maybe this was better. This was all such an awful waste of time. And yet I wouldn't change any of it.

This resolve only lasted less than an hour, by which time I missed his face, his stupid smile and stupid jokes. Right outside the door I bumped into a body in the dark, gave a startled yell and knocked over a wooden table.

"Finn-?" I began, then clamped my hand over my mouth.

"Who're you calling Finnick?" asked Lance, grabbing my arm to steady me. "Why were you expecting Finnick?"

I stared at him. "No reason," I said slowly and carefully, turning to pick up the table and set it upright once more.

We met each other's eyes cautiously.

"Where are you off to at this time of night?" I asked him.

He pulled a face. "Uh … I was just going up to the roof. To get some fresh air."

He ruffled his hair uncomfortably as I eyed him up and down with a suspicious smirk.

"Where are you going, anyway?" he asked me.

"I was … just getting some hot chocolate. From the kitchen."

"Oh. Don't you have one of those call buttons for that in your room?"

I almost slapped myself in the face. I was so dumb. "My room gives me claustrophobia," I said.

He just shrugged. "Fair enough."

We looked at each other for another shrewd moment, and I was wondering if I should ask him if he wanted company on the roof. But somehow, I had the slightest inkling that he wouldn't be needing it.

"Finnick's in the sitting room," he said suddenly, and my eyes widened. He smiled innocently and looked at his hands. "Did you know?"

He glanced up to meet my eyes, and I couldn't help the grin that stretched across my face. He just grinned back and grabbed my arm. "I won't ask you if you don't ask me," he whispered.

"Deal," I said quickly.

He drew me into a tight embrace. Still gripping my arm, he dragged me over to the door of the sitting room and threw it open.

Finnick was slouched on the couch, just as promised. He shot straight up when he saw us, looking guilty.

"Hey, Finn. I brought you a present." At this Lance shoved me into the room, and turned from the door with a grin. "You kids have fun," he said. And then he was gone.

Finnick was looking uncomfortable, but I was so embarrassed I could hardly look at him anyway.

"What was that about?" he asked. "Where's he off to?"

"None of our business," I replied.

"Oh, I get it. He's hooking up." I looked around, smiling widely at Finnick who just crossed his arms across his chest and scanned me up and down. "See, that boy has some common sense. I told you nobody wants to die a virgin, even if _you_ refuse to have him."

"I think it's more to do with the fact that he's in love," I said.

Finnick looked at me for another long moment. "For a while there I thought you weren't gonna show," he said. His voice was casual but his face gave away the fear that gripped him at that thought.

I just said, "Me too," and went and sat beside him on the comfy couch. Oh how I would miss that couch.

We sat side by side in silence for ages. Finnick had his arm slung over the back of the couch, and after a while he coughed slightly and said, "My arm is real tired, so if it happens to fall and land around your shoulders … then it's definitely not me trying to make a move on you or anything, okay? I would just be too tired to move it, if it happened to fall. Which it might, 's all I'm saying."

I looked up at him, meeting his green eyes. "Okay."

I counted to thirty in my head before he put his arm around my shoulders. It was weird how something so simple could have my heart racing so fast. Mostly I was worried. I had managed to avoid two of his attempts to kiss me already, could I do it again? Would I even be able to resist?

His fingers fiddled with a strand of my hair, and when I reached up to stop him he grabbed my fingers and laced them through his own. I decided not to stop him doing that. His hands were so strong and warm and tough. I watched as our thumbs played war and then I gave his fingers a light squeeze and hesitantly brought them up to touch against my lips.

Finnick went still, I could hear his steady breathing on my other side but I didn't look around. I just looked at his hands for another moment. It entered my head that these hands had killed people, and I quickly let go.

I looked around. Finnick's face was lowered too close to mine. He dropped his eyelids half closed as he watched me bite my bottom lip, then they widened as they flicked up to meet mine.

"And if I were to … um, rest my head against your chest," I began timidly, as he tightened his arm around me. "I wouldn't be trying to make a move on you, either. It's just that my head is real tired and, well, it looks very comfortable there and I'm sorta craving affection and stuff, so …"

Finnick was grinning so widely that most of my vision was just his clean white smile. "Okay," he said, the trace of a laugh in his voice.

I immediately threw myself against him, hugging him around the middle and pressing my cheek against his hard, muscled chest. He seemed surprised by my sudden attack because there was a tiny pause before he moved, and lay back on the couch with me in his arms which were wrapped tight around me.

I felt I could heighten all my senses. Every touch sent a wave of shivers over my body. Every beat of his heart I heard and felt as a tremor beneath his skin. My body moved against his as his chest rose and fell with every breath. He smelled clean and fresh, but airy and not overwhelming like the artificial smells from the Capitol showers.

I closed my eyes and focused on these things, his smell, his feel, his slightest sounds. Then I realised that I was obviously missing one sense, which was taste. But that wasn't going to happen, so I concentrated on the others and tried to hold them in my memory.

I hoped I would feel this sort of calmness when I died. I felt like there was nothing to be scared of. There was nothing left in the whole world.

"You make me feel so safe," I said, keeping my eyes shut. "Stupid, right?"

He paused before answering me, and when he did his voice was heavy with sadness. "I could keep you safe, you know. Me and Lance …"

"But you won't," I said. "You won't choose between us, will you Finnick?"

I looked up to meet his eyes, only to find that they were closed. His brow was furrowed. They opened a moment later, which was good because my neck was getting sore from craning it to look up into his face. He said, "I don't see how it makes a difference. If you'll be allies, then you'll be sharing anything I send."

I nodded and rested my head on his chest again, shifting around a bit to find a more comfortable spot. I punched his abs. "I wish you weren't so hard," I said.

Finnick laughed at this even though I really couldn't see what was so hilarious about it. "I wish you weren't so …" he began, trailing away uncertainly. He rested his head on top of mine and whispered into my hair, "I can't think of anything. You seem pretty perfect to me."

I groaned loudly.

"Sorry," he said quickly.

"It's okay," I sighed.

"I'm just not used to being so infatuated with someone," he said, as if we were talking about having dessert before dinner. "This _never_ happens to me. How the hell did you do this to me? What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything," I said.

"That's the scary part. You're just being you."

We were both quiet for a while. I didn't really think he was making sense but I didn't say anything.

"We could run away."

I laughed loudly. "Are you crazy?"

"Maybe I am," he replied. "But this could have been so incredibly perfect, if we met under different circumstances, in another world or something. What do you think it would have been like?" he asked.

"What does it matter? We're in this world and things are incredibly sucky."

He chuckled a little. "Can't you ever just tell me what I want to hear?"

"Not like this. I can't think about what could have been."

He kissed the top of my head gently. "Then humour me."

I thought for a moment.

In a different world, there were no Hunger Games. Finnick Odair was a devastatingly handsome but completely un-extraordinary young man who worked as a teaching assistant at Seafield High School, where a young girl named Annie Cresta was in her senior year. The school took the kids on a field trip to the Capitol of Panem. On the trip, Annie and Finnick got to talking and discovered that they found each other interesting and attractive and stayed up to all hours of the morning talking about practically nothing.

And everything was lovely, because neither of them had any intention of dying in the very near future.

When they returned from the trip, Finnick asked Annie on a date. They went to the pictures and had dinner like ordinary teenage couples. They went on a few dates, then Finnick came over to meet Annie's grandparents and Annie met Finnick's family, too. And they would walk on the beach hand in hand and hadn't a care in the world, because they didn't have to worry about anyone being pimped out to rich people or keeping anyone alive, and …

I stopped and looked at Finnick, who had his eyes closed again and a slight smile on his face.

And because I know it can't be like this for us, I'm going to presume that everything went perfect for the other world Finnick and Annie, and after dating for a while they realised that they were in love with each other. And when they were a bit older they got married, and bought a little house, with a back yard that opened out onto the beach and an attic where they kept pigeons. And I'm not sure if we're ready to think about kids yet so I'll just say they had a hell of a lot of cats. But the cats weren't allowed in the attic.

This fantasy got a bit away from me. Are you creeped out yet?

"It sound nice," he said.

I rolled my eyes, but I figured I had no chance of living this life, so I could make it as silly and easy and perfect as I wanted.

"Would I be allowed to kiss you in that world?" Finnick asked.

"It's a make-believe world, Finnick. You can do whatever the heck you want." He gave another sigh and I felt a bit bad so I said, "Sorry, it's just … It's gonna be impossible to say goodbye as it is. I can't make it any harder."

"I know," he said, and stroked my tangled hair. Then he took my hand from his chest and held it. "And it's okay. I like just this. It's not often I get to do just this."

I was just watching his thumb trace calming circles into my palm when I noticed something and yanked his wrist towards me.

"This is one of my bracelets," I said, looking from the band on his wrist to his face. It wasn't one of the kiddie ones I made, but from a set of my more recent creations. It was a thicker cuff with plaited palm grass and strings of black, brown and green material. Held in the centre was a small metal disk with three wavy lines carved into it, supposed to be the waves of the ocean. "When did you get this?"

"I've had it the whole time," he said. He smiled at me and looked at the band. "My kid brother had a crush on the pretty girl that works in the gift shop, he was always making excuses for going in there."

"Oh," I said. And then, "Oh, you mean me. Thanks … Was it Tori?"

"No, Yoshie."

"But, he's eleven!"

"And?"

"And I'm seventeen!"

"Yeah, so you're a hot older woman! In that case." He paused thoughtfully for a moment. "Whereas in my case, I feel like you make up for your sexual immaturity with your profound wisdom, which compared to myself …"

"Is exactly the opposite?" I offered, looking up at him.

He grinned his secret smile, all eyes and teeth and dimples again. "Exactly."

I grinned too and looked back at his fingers as he ran them over the green ribbon I had worn at the reaping which was still twisted around Grammy's pearl bracelet.

"It's crazy. Anyone could walk in at any moment, and I don't even care."

"What? Should you be embarrassed of me or something?" I asked.

"No, but I have a feeling I'd be in trouble if anyone found out. It kinda ruins my reputation."

He was probably right. What would people say if the Capitol heartthrob was revealed to have an interest in some plain, slightly eccentric girl from his district?

"Nobody would believe it anyway," I said. "I mean, I hardly believe it myself."

I felt him smile into my hair. His voice was slightly lower when he said, "Well, we could go somewhere more private, I guess."

I swallowed and closed my eyes for a moment. "I was actually thinking of going to bed soon."

He paused. "And that's not an invitation, is it?"

I twisted my neck to meet his eyes. "I'm sorry. But I should be getting some sleep, right? The Games are tomorrow."

He made a face and then grinned stupidly. "I just realised what a terrible mentor I am, keeping you awake and all."

I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him close. "On the contrary, Finnick Odair. You're the best mentor in all the land."

We lay for a little while longer and then I forced myself up and after a few attempts to drag me back down again, Finnick agreed to walk me to my door. Then there was a lot of hugging.

"Seriously, what have you done to me? I've known you for, what? Five days? And now I can't even imagine not having you around. Going out to the sitting room every night hoping you'll be there. And your eccentricities, and everything about you. How did you manage, in five days, to have me completely on my knees, idiotically and self-destructively, head over heels in-"

I reached up and hastily clamped my hand over his mouth. "Don't," I said firmly. His eyes looked deep into mine, his sea-green eyes that had felt more pain and seen more horrific things than anyone should have to see.

He took my hand from his mouth and held it tight. "I literally cannot say goodbye."

"Then don't say that," I said. "… Say, 'It was nice to meet you.'"

"It was nice to meet you," he repeated quietly.

I unwrapped the green ribbon from around my wrist and twisted it around the cuff on his arm. Then I shook his hand.

"I'll never forget you," he said, cupping my face in his hands.

"I'm not worried about leaving a legacy," I responded. "Because one day, hopefully not too soon, you'll be dead too. And I'll be forgotten. But there will come a time when all the greatest people of our days – whether they be artist or scientist or political leader or celebrity victor – will be forgotten too. One day the human race will cease to exist and our whole civilisations turned to dust, and not even that will be remembered. Nobody will be around any more to care. So you don't need to worry about remembering me. I hope you grow to a nice old age and forget me completely."

Finnick looked at me for a moment. Then he smiled. "Do all these things come right off the top of your head, or have you a strict set of beliefs you like to share with me?"

"A bit of both," I replied.

"Well, all I know is that it would take a lot to forget you, Annie," he said. "It really would."

Hopefully that would be because Lance would be alive as a constant reminder of my previous existence. I thought this would be too painful to voice, so I didn't say it out loud.

"I have to go now," I said finally. "Or else I'll never leave."

He choked on his words. Well, just one word actually. "Okay."

He didn't make a move to leave, so I just took a deep, deep breath and backed away to the bedroom door. I reached behind me and turned the doorknob, both fearing and hoping for it to be locked. But it opened and after a brief hesitation I continued backwards through the door. He stood outside, leaning against the door-frame as I closed the door a crack. For a while we looked at each other with our faces close to the tiny wedge of an opening, where the slant of light from the hallway cast a dark shadow across his face.

Eventually, he gave me a certain look and I nodded and shut the door.

Of course I didn't sleep a wink. And I thought of going back out again, but I just couldn't do it.

All I could hope was that I would die as soon as possible just to be rid of this pain in my chest, but I couldn't do that either. I need to stay alive, for Lance.

And that was my Last Night on Earth. And part of my Last Morning on Earth. I was sitting, waiting on the edge of my bed when Holden burst in, shouting, "Today's the day, darling! Oh, but I couldn't stop-"

He looked around as Finnick followed him though my open door.

I jumped to my feet. "Finnick, I can't say goodbye again!"

"Maybe I should just-" began Holden.

"Just one thing, then I'm gone. Okay?" Finnick wasn't looking at my stylist for permission, but at me. I looked at him painfully, then shrugged. He took a deep breath, then blurted out, "Are you in love with Lance?"

"I'll just be-"

"_What_?" I exclaimed. "Are you insane?"

"-If anyone needs me," finished Holden, obnoxiously loud, backing away into a corner.

"I just need to know," said Finnick.

"Well, _no._ Of course not!" I said. "Lance is my best friend! He doesn't mean anything like that to me. We care about each other a lot but I can't love him because he's not … Lance is just so normal, you know?" I went up to Finnick and put my hands on either side of his face, looking into his tortured eyes. He looked back at me and swallowed slightly. I bit my lip. "He's like my _brother_, Finnick. He's my best friend but he's not the sort of person I can confide everything with. Because he just doesn't understand. It's not his fault. We're best friends because he needs a bit of weirdness in his life, and I need a bit of normality, and that's all we need of each other. That's it. But I'm more likely to be in love with someone who understands me better. Someone who has their own problems, you know what I mean?"

His chest heaved with every breath, and he met my eyes with fierce earnestness and wet his lips just slightly. He knew. I knew he knew. Because these reasons I had for not loving Lance were true, but they were only a very tiny, irrelevant smidge on the broad spectrum of reasons I could have listed.

But these were not really the reasons I wasn't in love with Lance. They were the reasons I was in love with Finnick.

Well, some of them anyway.

"Not that this isn't real sweet," interrupted Holden, "but we seriously need to get going?"

We looked around at him, then both completely ignored him and turned back to each other.

"And," I continued hurriedly, stroking the short hairs at the bottom of his neck, "Lance lies to me. I know he thinks he's protecting me, but I'd still rather someone who tells me the truth." I couldn't fight back the tears any longer. They began to stream down my face as I asked, "You don't lie, do you Finnick?"

He pursed his lips together, bringing my face closer to his and brushing away my tears with light fingers. "Well, I try not to," he said.

I trembled a little, and then whispered, "What are my chances of getting out of this alive?"

Finnick did not lie. Instead, he simply leaned down and pressed his lips against mine.

It was a quick and innocent kiss. And although it felt like it lasted forever, it was actually only a few seconds later that my eyes opened again and saw his, bright green and glistening with tears. Anyone watching probably wouldn't have thought twice about it. It wasn't a very romantic kiss. Well, it was to us, but from another perspective it could have meant anything at all. It could have been a kiss between friends, or family, or a kiss between a mentor and his tribute. It could have been a kiss good luck, or a simple display of affection, whatever form it might have been taking. But this kiss meant none of that. Or else it meant all of that, I can't remember which.

But we each knew exactly what it meant. And all I said was, "I appreciate the honesty."

Because it was not a kiss between lovers, but a first kiss and a last kiss, and as I looked into his eyes after it I knew exactly what it meant, and I knew he knew it, too.

I would not get out of this alive. And Finnick and I would never see each other again. But we'd always remember, as long as we lived, no matter how short that time may be. That's what the kiss meant.

It was a lot simpler than that, actually. It meant goodbye.


	14. Chapter 14

Heh … Maybe you weren't expecting this. But here you go anyway. I hit a hundred reviews, and I wanna say THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH! This is incredible xD

Don't stop reading anyway, things get freaky from here O.o

**Chapter 14**

I …

I did not expect this.

Lance wrung his hands dry, the drops of light glistening as they fell from his golden skin and returned to their crystal home in the water. He reached up and rumpled his hair back from his face. "Go ahead," he said, and smiled at me, his face lighting up with the solemn joy. "I'll catch up." Then he dropped to his knees and continued fishing in the little tide pool, where the evening sun shone crimson on the rippled surface of the water.

I glanced at Juliet to see her throw herself with violent delight onto the grass, catching a bewildered butterfly between the clutches of porcelain white fingers. Her tinkling laughter rang out like bells all around, silencing all other sounds in the world as the snow white butterfly fluttered delicately from her, leaving a trail of sparkling diamonds in the air in its tremulous wake. She kicked her feet up in the air, her chin in her palms, carefree as a young bride as she watched its haphazard path. Lance laughed loudly as he swiped at the butterfly, to touch the icy silk of its wings just once, but instead it went to him and landed on his nose, and gave him a gentle kiss. He rolled his head around and looked past me, silenced to the nothingness behind.

I looked at the other boy, the taller one with the blonde hair swept over his eye. And Laertes looked from Juliet, to Lance, and then me, and said,

"Just _go_! _GO_!"

His cracked voice startled me, his throat sounded like gravel drenched in fear, despair, anguish. My head spun with confusion and my body convulsed as the world began to shake all around me. But I forgot it almost immediately, as I felt Finnick's arm tighten around me and everything steadied and focussed again. His eyes were bright green as emeralds, and shone like them too. They danced with joy as he met my gaze and said, "Yeah, we should go." He seemed to glower light into me as he flashed his gorgeous, sideways smile. "Let's go."

He took my hand in his, and then we were running as fast as our legs would carry us. I took one glance back to see the meadow covered in daisies and the three figures, one standing, two torn down like trees, and everything glowing in the dying red sunlight. Every flower on the ground was a pale and blank face, and every one of them had Lance's eyes.

The sight was lost to the jungle, enormous leaves of a green as bright and luminous as Finnick's eyes and rain drops the size of footballs rolling off them. Their steady _plop!_ counted away the hours of the day, when the life would go to sleep forever in the dark night of death. The sun was going down and he cast blood light all around, the particles finding the gaps in the leaves and shining down slantways in long beams that burned my skin. But we kept running. We ran past the flowers the size of dustbin lids, of colours too bright and too vibrant for human eyes; the gigantic dragonflies with wings made of sequins and bodies of shimmering gold glitter; the caterpillar that gazed at me with round eyes like saucers and the millions of spiders scrabbling along by my feet, all spinning their webs and silk cocoons around me as I ran; the twisted, knotted reeds and roots that crept along the jungle floor and grabbed at my feet, but never bringing me down. Finnick was always there to catch me before I fell. Eventually we passed a familiar patch of spotted mushrooms on which bounced little white mice, before we came crashing out of the trees and stumbled gracefully onto the hot, blinding white sand.

We laughed hysterically as we stood up and laced our fingers once again, and Finnick ran out ahead of me. How we weren't tired, I'll never know, but my feet hardly touched the ground. I was faster than him so I easily outran him, leading the way to the end of the day as the sun sunk down over the troubled ocean. We leaped lightly over precarious rocks, toes barely touching their sharpened, jagged edges as we flew. The waves snapped and spat at our feet with many-toothed, wide open mouths, but they couldn't do us any harm. We could have run along the tops of the waves, if we wanted to. But we had much more important plans in mind. We saw the mermaids in the water and waved to them, their glistening, fashionable skirts and golden tridents distorted by the water's movement. They waved back at us, smiling menacing, sharp-toothed sneers.

Soon the sun's boyish face was gone but the sky remained pink, and we ran and ran and ran and would keep running until he rose again. Nothing ran faster than I, not even the light. So as we ran, time slowed down entirely until it almost didn't have a purpose any more. And we would keep running, until dawn, until the end of time. We would spin the Earth 'round and 'round, and hold time forever in this beautiful place.

We would be immortal, if we kept on flying.

I thought the cave was a bit of a weird place for a picnic. And the bread an odd sort of meal. Two loaves, for us to share. The touch of its warmth filled me with Finnick's security, his love, and I pressed it to my cheek and absorbed its affection with a sigh of satisfaction. Here, I was safe. We sat on the backs of jewelled crabs, which were so beautiful in their rainbows of colours that we didn't even mind their jagged shells, leaving dark bruised imprints on our bare sides. We lay there on the quietly stirring bed of crustaceans and they scuttled and shifted occasionally, and stared up at the ceiling of shuffling black bats as pitch as night.

We rested our weary heads as time returned, the Earth stopped spinning, and the flood crashed into the cave. It tore me apart, cut up against the shrapnel of rocks and crabs and carrying my body away in its grasp. But the pain was not of the sort my heart had felt hundreds of years before, or the bodily pain of the recent past. The waves stole my matter, my body, my weight, and without it I realised what had been there the whole time. I was nothing, floating gently on the crest of the waves, the current guiding and carrying me. I swam with it for it was me and I was it, and everything was everything and nothing was nothing. And I was nothing, and it was me and it was everything, and so I was everything and nothing.

And nothing was everything. See?

I saw the welcoming light, streaming through the blue in buttery yellow rays. I followed it, knowing what it would bring. It would bring the end, the final peace, my happiness for eternity.

The light ripped through me, tearing my soul from the last of my earthly body.

And that's what I became: particles, dust, floating in the water and as part of it. I tumbled through the waves, sank to the ocean floor, passed between fish and mammals and plants and light, broke the surface and washed up along the shore, filtered through the sand into the earth. I joined the cycle; I ate and was eaten, I burned and birthed new energy, I breathed and grew in life and died when it did, and was reborn and recycled all the while. From the earth I was released into the air, flying on the wind and the cool, fresh breezes, over oceans and mountains and rivers, and cities and continents. I reached for a shooting star and it burned right through me and sent me shattering across the sky, bright as fireworks. I lay down in the downy clouds, as fresh and soft as new cotton on my itching skin …

My skin?

… I … I mean my _mind._ I must be still getting used to my bodiless form. That's rather silly of me … So where was I?

Oh, yeah. I can feel the softness of the clouds around my self, my particles, my dust …

But how do I feel it? Because that's it, I can definitely feel it there. How can I feel it without touch receptors, and all those glands and neuropathways and things? It's there, above and below me. But what's giving me this sense of direction?

And who is this 'me' person I keep going on about, anyway? Who am I? I'm not a 'me', I'm the dust. I'm the air. I'm the life. What do I mean by _who am I_?

I lie heavily in the clouds, not lying and not heavy but just a consciousness. Just an eye, watching the world become dark.

Now that you mention it, I do feel rather heavy. That can't be right, can it? Without a body how is there mass, how is there weight, gravity always dragging me down? I feel it now more than ever in the darkness. The heaviness. There's a throbbing, somewhere lower than my mind. How far do I go, I seem to stretch out like a twig from this point. How far?

I wiggle my toes, and then my mind gasps. Toes? How do I have toes? They feel less like toes than wriggling sausages, and I can't feel all of them, but they are definitely there. What else? I shift my foot and my leg comes with it from the knee. I bend the knee and everything below the waist goes too.

What else? I must have other extremities. Fingers, clutched into the cotton sheets, broken nails getting caught on stray threads. I count them all, on one hand, one, two … five! Five fingers! And on the other … Four! Four? Only – oh, I forgot to count the thumb, which was doing the counting and so easily overlooked. So four fingers on each hand, and two thumbs, gives ten fingers and thumbs altogether. I don't remember how I know this, but that seems to be an appropriate amount.

My hands wander over my body, checking things to be in order. Hesitantly, I reach my face. Flat, clammy forehead leads onto two thin furry caterpillars. Below that the skin becomes thinner, more delicate, and my fingers trace over them lightly. The bone dips in from the brow and then curves out again, ending in another texture, the same as the caterpillars but softer. That's when I realise my eyes are closed, it's not just dark because it's night time.

I save their opening for later, I'm not quite ready for that yet.

There's a hill and a sudden drop, and then a sudden cold. What is that? It seems unfamiliar. But what do I mean by that? It's hard and smooth, a plastic tube entering my nose and crossing my face. And then I notice my breathing, the rise and fall of my chest and the sound of inhalation coming from somewhere to my left. And so I have ears too? I can hear? It's comforting, the other sound. I'm not doing my own breathing. I can't, because I'm dead.

My fingers continue to the tender skin of the crest of my lips. Then a perky chin where it all ends.

I lie still for a while, and follow the plastic tube to the side of the bed until it goes too far for me to reach. I can't move my body or sit up, not yet, and I don't want to open my eyes. This is all very strange. What happened to the air, the earth, the water? What happened to my particle body, my consciousness floating without containment? What happened to me?

Am I dreaming? If death is sleep, and sleep has dreams … does death have dreams, too? What a scary thought! But it's not death that needs to be feared, maybe nightmares don't exist there. There … where is there, if I'm here? No … I must still be there. But I need to get back to the clouds to meet the others. They'll be arriving any time now, who knows how time goes here.

I'll wake up soon and be back. I did not expect this. I got what I expected, and that was death. And it was beautiful.

What is this?

Who am I? I'm the dust. I'm the air. I'm the life. I'm no body, I'm no one.

Suddenly, a song bursts into my mind.

Annie Cresta went to sea …

I drift in and out, gently floating on the brink of consciousness like the little boat on the crest of the waves. I wait for the moment I wake up from this slumber and find myself back in the air, my body lost once more. It's so unnerving to find it back, I don't like it at all.

I wait to be brought back to life, but the light never comes.


	15. Chapter 15

Confused?

Well, so is Annie.

Kinda the whole point ;)

Oh, and I am so sorry for how long this took. I've had not so much writer's block as MOTIVATION BLOCK. Been trying to get a job, see, and failing at that.

Oh and rest assured I have skipped the games just for now, due to Annie's post-traumatic stress/amnesia etc. BUT don't be too disappointed. The details of the Games shall be dealt with soon enough.

If you still have no clue what's going on, basically Annie almost drowned when the arena flooded, and even though she managed to survive, she currently thinks she is dead. That's always a fun thought ;)

**Chapter 15**

I am one of those many, many minds that believe that all the greatest and largest mysteries of the universe can be solved if we simply had a bit more time to sit – or stand, or lie down, as the case may be – and have a very deep think. If a man – or woman, as the case may be – sat out in a rowing boat in the middle of an abandoned lake or ocean or very large puddle, and sat in thoughtfulness for a hundred years, he might figure out at least one of the greatest questions of our time. Questions such as; what happens when we die? What happens before we live? Is there a higher power somewhere above us, controlling our lives like puppets on strings? Is there a higher power out there somewhere, planting the seeds of our lives and watching them grow in unexpected, unprecedented ways? Is there a higher power out there who gave up on us long ago, and is currently curled up in a ball on the floor, unable to stop sobbing and wondering where it all went wrong in the first place? What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of death? What is the meaning of the square root of a negative number? What is stopping us from crawling into a ball on the floor, succumbing to the uncontrollable sobbing and wondering where it all went wrong in the first place?

But even if one of these questions was answered by a man, or woman, or neither of the above, sitting in a boat in the middle of an isolated body of water, chances are there is another person in exactly the same predicament, sitting for a hundred years and wondering even if we could answer one of these questions, what difference would it make anyway?

More likely if one came up with a solution to one of these questions, the Great Thinker with the Answer would row, row, row their little boat back to shore (assuming they are healthy enough to do so after a hundred years and not in fact dead), and vehemently return to civilisation only to find that civilisation is no more. Because it is part of this same belief that predicts that the very precise second we find out The Answer to the Universe, the universe will rather abruptly meet its untimely end.

(Either that, or the precise moment the Great Thinker of questionable gender thinks up the Answer, he, she, or it will rather abruptly meet his, her, or its timely end, and never get to share their great discovery.)

Unlike a lot of beliefs that people believe, I happen to believe that this belief is quite believable. As a believable believer of this belief, I happen to believe this belief for no other reason than for this reason: I happen to believe that this belief is believably believable.

That is to say, I believe it is right.

But one thing I can scarcely believe is the fact that I've been lying here for a very, very, very long time with nothing to do but to think. I've been thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking, and I have come up with three beliefs that are not beliefs at all but observations I believe to be unbelievable, but true.

The first of these beliefs is that although I could well be a Great Thinker, I most definitely am not lying in a small rowing boat in some large body of water, or in a hermit's cave beside a goat sanctuary, or beneath a desk in an abandoned staple factory (depending on what type of Great Thinker I may be), unless of course these places are freshly furnished with a sturdy metal bed, cotton sheets and fluffed pillows, because that is where I appear to be held.

The next of these beliefs is that although I have not yet opened my eyes to observe my surroundings, I can conclude with great certainty that it is very, very, very bright here.

The final belief (or believable observation) I have from all my thinking is that something is dreadfully wrong. Here a set of sub-beliefs is required. One: something happened. Not that I can remember. Two: I died. Three: I was dead for a while. Things were quite lovely. Four: I can only imagine that I fell asleep on the clouds and am now experiencing what can only be described as a nightmare. Five: I am still waiting to wake up. I wasn't nearly finished being dead yet.

Understandably, this brings along a few more questions. Primarily, what sort of dreams can death allow?

I use observational skills to come to a conclusion. This is my conclusion: very strange ones indeed.

Secondly, how do the dreams of the dead compare with the dreams of the living? I use my great ability of philosophical musings to overcome this seemingly mysterious question. The answer I reach is this: in living dreams you cannot get hurt. You pinch yourself to wake up. Dreams of the living are nothing to afraid of, unless of course you are a sufferer of night terrors or sleepwalking, as everyone knows the numerous dangers associated with these horrible afflictions. But death, from my experience and from previous assumptions, cannot harm you either. When you are dead you cannot feel pain. This has caused a certain song to be stuck in my head for as long as I have been dwelling on these thoughts. The song was most likely written by a Great Thinker, and goes like this:

Row, row, row your boat  
Gently down the stream  
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,  
Life is but a dream!

Other than a rather inordinate amount of repetition and rather haunting conclusion, this song holds the exact answer I have been looking for. While I am alive I can be hurt, but if I dream in my life I cannot. But if I am dead and I cannot be hurt, then it is only logical that if I dream while I am dead then _I can be harmed_. If life is in fact 'but a dream' … then the sleep of death holds dreams that can be harmfully, harmfully, harmfully, harmfully apt to make you scream!

If life is but a dream, is a dream but life?

When I think of this I begin to feel the blood I apparently have in my veins rushing to my head, so I shall move on to:

Thirdly, how in the world do I wake myself up?

This third question is quite bit trickier than the others.

I try pinching myself. This has no effect but proving that these dreams can and will hurt me, and I must try to wake up to my safe, safe death as swiftly as possible.

I try rolling over, but this only results in twisting some tubes around and getting tangled up and pinched and pulled painfully, also verifying the earlier hypothesis. I lie there for a while in pain, half-rolled to one side and unable to muster the strength to fix things. For a moment I feel like I must be waking up because my mind gets foggy, but then I find myself back in my original position in the bed, still stuck and making no progress.

Finally, I decide that I must open my eyes. I can tell there's a very bright light or six around me, and that seems to be the key to awaking from this terrible nightmare. After all, when I died there was light. Right? I can't really remember, but I think there was. Light seems like a good sign anyway. It means morning, and morning means waking up! Morning also means breakfast, but if all goes well I shall never eat again, for I shall be dead, and won't have need for that kind of thing.

I do a lot of preparation before the opening of the eyes. I scrunch them up, and relax them. I roll them around inside their sockets, slowly training them for the big show. I carefully study the patterns I can see with them still closed, indistinguishable red and dark blotches, fragments of thoughts I cannot identify. Finally, I relax my eyelids, and carefully, carefully, carefully flutter my lashes until it begins to hurt and I have to close them again.

It takes time, but eventually I have sight. I can look around.

Lying on my back, I appear to be in a dense fog. I can only see whiteness everywhere, engulfing me and my entire surroundings. I have sight but I see nothing. I open and close my eyes rapidly, squinting so hard it hurts and widening my eyes so far I fear I'll get stuck like that if the wind changes. But there's no wind here to speak of, and with my eyes open it's like my ears become open too, and all sorts of sounds hit them. Hushed shouts all around, rolling wheels and crashing carts and clanging metals and pens scratching loudly and sheets ruffling and a constant, continuous, ear-splitting _bleep! _and the obnoxiously heavy wheezing somewhere to my left, and somewhere to my right, a sort of dry, muffled sob. Opening my ears seems to only bring the noises closer.

So many voices. I roll over again, becoming entangled in tubes and wires like a bug caught in a spider's web or a fish caught in a net, and I pull and pull and pull so that the tubes tug and it hurts, even though I know the pain won't be able to wake me. The light couldn't wake me, nor the sounds, and no matter how long I lie in this bed and think, it would be impossible to think up an answer to this last question. I cannot wake up.

I can only drift back into the fog, and then come around some time later only to have it happen all over again.

However, the next time I find myself in some state of consciousness, something is different. For one thing, I am no longer lying down, but sitting up, my head and back propped up with a pillow. For another thing, one of my hands lies outside the covers. And in my hand, is something else.

Keeping my eyes closed, I feel the something in my hand. It's large, bigger than my own hand, and is soft and warm. I twitch away from it when it moves, then knit my brow and take it up in my hand again. As fingers lace through mine I realise that it is another hand, but who it belongs to I can't even imagine. The thumb of this alien hand begins to trace circles in my palm, and I wrinkle my brow again.

Since I can't dream of who this hand might belong to, the only thing I can think of to do is to open my eyes and find out.

And so I do.

It takes a moment to adjust to the bright lights, and I find myself blinking at a blurry figure sitting by the side of my bed. I look at the hands, entwined on top of the blanket as things begin to focus. The other hand is, thankfully, attached to an arm, which is attached to the shoulder and torso of a boy. Well, he's almost a man, I suppose. He's dressed entirely in articles of clothing, with nothing on his feet but a pair of socks and two shoes. He has hair growing out of the top of his head, and his face contains a mouth, a nose and two eyes. Eyes which are currently goggling at me the way one person might look at someone else, if that someone else happens to be a ghost.

The mouth on the face of the boy then opens, and he cries,

"Any!"

Any? Any what? Maybe he wants to know if I have any idea what's going on. Or maybe he's asking if I have any oxygen he could borrow. Or maybe he'd enquiring into whether there's any chance I could please let go of his hand.

Then it hits me like a pillowcase, if that pillowcase happened to be filled with a ton of bricks. The song! Annie Cresta went to sea! With that, everything else seems to follow, rushing over me like a tidal wave.

Finnick, Finnick, went to sea –

Down in the valley where the green grass grows –

My name being called into a microphone. ANNIE CRESTA, blaring around the city circle. A crowd cheering. The little mermaid. An anthem playing in the distance. A cannon booming, over and over and over. Leaves rustle, and Lance looks up from fishing with his spear in the small pool. "Go on ahead," he says, frowning only slightly. "I'll catch up." Running through a jungle. Rolling in the sand. Lying in a cave.

Finnick Odair in his underwear.

"Finnick!" I screech. I mean, I would have screeched if my voice hadn't broken and begun a coughing fit that only worsened the scratchiness in my throat. I blindly take the glass that's forced into my hands and drink deeply from it, gasping when I finally emerge.

Finnick is on the edge of his seat. He takes the glass and returns it to a cabinet beside the cot in which I've been lying all this time. I can see properly for the first time, and realise that it is Finnick, of course it's him. How could I have possibly forgotten? His tall stature, athletic body, perfect jawline, reddish-brown hair and those sea green eyes. His hand, strong and sturdy, which is back holding my own. His smile, that goofy sideways grin that makes me unable to stop smiling myself, hardly noticing how the monitor on the other side of my bed begins to bleep more frantically as my heart-rate increases.

"Hey," he says, giving my hand a squeeze.

"Hi."

For a moment we stare at each other, and I'm beginning to feel a little unsettled at the fact that I cannot seem to remember how I know Finnick at all. Or where I am. Or what happened to me.

He's smiling sheepishly now, trying to figure out what to say. So I say, "How's it going?"

He laughs shortly. "It's …" He laughs again and shakes his head. "How are you feeling?" he asks, lowering his voice.

I lift my free hand and scratch my head. "Well, I don't know exactly, but it's something to do with the skin and nerve endings and things …"

His eyebrows raise slightly, and he pauses for a while before saying, "And … _what_ are you feeling?"

"Oh," I say quickly, and then I need to think. What am I feeling? "That's a much harder question," I reply finally, leaning forwards to whisper it with a small smile. He smiles back, and says nothing. I continue to think about the question, and in the end all I can do is smile wider and say, "This dream is a lot nicer than the others."

Finnick laughs again. "You're not dreaming, Annie," he tells me.

"Well, you see, that's exactly what someone in a dream would say," I whisper back.

He chuckles and shakes his head. "I can't argue with that." He looks around. "Doctors should be along any minute if you're awake. They'll kill me for not calling them right away …"

I look around the room for the first time. It's fairly small, with a door over there and a large window leading onto a narrow corridor. Everything is white. I look down and see the tube that runs from underneath my nose to the tank at the side of my bed, which wheezes every few seconds, consistently, never ceasing. There are more wires sticking out of my arm. My eyes follow the green line tracking my heartbeat on the monitor that bleeps. "Doctors?" I ask quietly, watching the line spike up and down and up and down. "Why? Are you sick, Finnick?"

I don't look over at him, but I can feel his silence and his stare. "Annie … Do you know where you are?"

I press my lips together and meet his eyes carefully. He swallows and grips my hand in both of his, leaning closer to the bed.

"Do you remember what happened?"

I stare at the end of the bed and give a small shrug. "Well, I dunno exactly. There was that school trip to the Capitol, right?" Finnick is staring at me now, his eyes very wide. I pout my lips in concentration, trying to remember what happened after we got into that hovercraft that brought us away. "And then Lance was there in the tide pools – and Juliet and Laertes, too – and you took me for a picnic in that cave. And all those flowers, and the crabs and the bats. It really was romantic, Finnick."

I give a short laugh, but something doesn't feel quite right. Maybe it's the way Finnick is glaring at me now. He's completely frozen, eventually he chokes out, "Annie … You were in a cave but I wasn't there with you."

I smile. He's so silly sometimes. "Yeah, you were."

He just shakes his head. And I take a deep breath that shudders fearfully through my whole body. I retract my hand quickly from his grasp.

"Yes, you were. You had the bread …" I stop and stare at him, my body gripped with panic that I don't understand. I have to remind myself that it's only a dream.

Only a dream.

Finnick's eyes are wet and his voice breaks when he speaks. "No, Annie … I sent you the bread. I wasn't there."

"Yeah, yeah, you were the bread. It was warm and it was your bread and it was …" I realise my eyes are stinging with tears, and my voice has raised to a shout. I swallow a sob and mutter, "It was …" I'm so confused. Images keep flashing up in my head, things I can't remember ever happening but seem so real at the same time. The red, dying sun in the jungle. The rocks and the crashing sea. The cave. They're empty, always empty. I'm all alone. My voice is barely audible when I manage to say, "It was kinda soggy, actually."

Lance's eyes, blank and staring.

Finnick's hand tightens around mine. "Why was it soggy, Annie?"

I breath in through my mouth as my body quakes. "Because … Because I was crying," I realise aloud.

The sounds in my ears are deafening. Some wild bug going _bleep! bleep! bleep!_ faster and faster in the night. Scurrying footsteps all around. I'm panting. And always more sobbing. It never ends.

I screw my eyes up tight as my eardrums tremble like thunder, threatening to burst. And just above all the noises, I hear him ask one more question.

And why were you crying?

Then there's the screaming. Screaming, screaming, screaming. I clamp my hands over my ears in a last desperate attempt to silence the sounds as I flail around, trying to fight off the many-legged caterpillar that's attempting to pin me down.

Quite suddenly, my limbs relax and I am returned to the fog, feeling his hand slip quietly from mine as I'm knocked unconscious once again.

When I wake up, Finnick is nowhere to be found. There is, however, a woman sitting in the chair by my bedside. I don't recognise her so I spend a good deal of time ignoring her, facing the other direction and watching the filter of the wheezing tank rise up and down like an accordion.

"It's good to see you awake, Annie," I hear the woman say.

I roll over and stare at her. She looks back, smiling good-naturedly at me. I just stare, blinking slowly every once in a while.

"I'm Doctor Jeckyll, and this is Nurse Hyde." I look up to see a man standing at the end of my bed, holding a clipboard and smiling the same, sickly sort of smile.

Jeckyll and Hyde. How very nice to meet you. How do you do?

"Are you feeling well today, Annie?" the nurse asks.

Very well, thank you for asking.

"Hm … Don't feel like speaking, huh?" says Jeckyll.

Very observational, aren't you Doctor?

"That's all right, Annie. We have much time to talk later. For now, Nurse Hyde just needs to run a few tests …"

Blah, blah, BLAH. The doctor leaves the room and the nurse comes over to the side of the bed and does some random, unnecessary, useless tests like shining a light into my eyes and prodding me painfully in places.

Before the nurse leaves, I ask him where Finnick is.

"Finnick Odair?" he repeats. "Well, I expect he's busy. He's a busy man."

More nonsense. I just lie there, thinking. I have a lot to think about so I spend a lot more time doing just that. They leave the lights on all the time here, so I don't know how many days pass, and I have no way of knowing how long I've been here before now. There's no sunshine. There's no moonlight. It's all artificial. Even the air is artificial, and I don't even breath it myself.

After a while, I ask Nurse Hyde a few questions and find out a lot of things. He is often glad to sit down and fill me in on what's going on around me. The wheezing machine delivers four litres of air into my lungs with every erroneous breath, because of the damage my lungs took when I almost drowned. Obviously, most of what he tells me is lies. I'm still dreaming, so technically it's my subconscious that's lying to me, so I forgive him. Sometimes he tells me things that I can somewhat recall.

I am reminded of something called the Hunger Games. That's when things get confusing.

Eventually, Finnick returns, and it's him who tells me about Lance and the others. I'm still confused, but I try not to get too upset. It's just a dream, after all. A very elaborate dream, but nothing more than that.

At some point, it dawns on me that these dreams of death seem eerily similar to plain old _life._

And though it's not a hundred years, I gather enough information and spend enough time thinking that I can figure out some things that I believe must be certain.

My name is Annie Cresta, and I died in the 70th Hunger Games.

… But the more time passes in this dreamland, the less sure I become.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

Someone once told me that death is easy: it's the dying part that's tricky. But from my experience, I have to say I disagree. In fact, I found the exact opposite to be true.

For me, dying was simple. It was nice. Beautiful. All colours, brighter than you could imagine, glowing with light and beckoning to me in welcome. After living my whole life in the dark, I finally understood. The whole world shifted into place and everything, absolutely everything suddenly made sense. I was lost and I found the way. I found out the truth. I knew what was going on around me, it was just how everyone had guessed since the beginning of humanity. There was a bright light, and I knew I had to go towards it.

I did, and that was it. I died.

Dying was easy. It felt like floating. No effort.

But, after that … things got a lot more difficult.

First, everything went dark and I thought, "Oh, okay, so this is death, huh?" I became part of everything, my energy, my force, and it was all so full of life that mine no longer mattered. My spirit, soul, whatever you want to call it, wandered the Earth and passed through everything. It was just how I expected. And I knew that soon, everyone I loved would join me there. We would be full of that life for eternity.

The complications came next. Things got heavy, and I could feel myself. My body, I mean. A body that shouldn't have been there.

And now, I find myself here. And … I don't know. I can't seem to find my way back. And it's not easy, this death. It's harder than anything I've felt before.

I thought that death would be better than life, but it's not. It's so, _so_ much worse. But I don't think I'm in hell. Not exactly.

But I don't like it anyway. Death … Afterlife … _Here_.

It's not what I expected.

"But you are not dead, Annie," Doctor Jeckyll would say. "You survived the Games! You lived! You didn't die at all!"

I would just stare out of the window, watching leaves of orange and brown, curl up and fall from the trees.

Didn't I?

"No, Annie. You didn't! You're here. You're _alive_."

Am I?

"Yes! You are!" she says in encouragement, as if that should make me feel better.

It doesn't, of course. It's one thing that makes me feel worse.

They don't get it. I remember Finnick mentioning the word 'analyst' one time, before all of this. I hadn't known what the word meant, I presumed it was some sort of financial advisor or something. But then one day, Doctor Jeckyll came back to my room in the hospital and told me that I was ready to have sessions with her soon. She's not a real doctor at all, but a psycho_-analyst._ Apparently it's normal for someone like me to suffer from what they keep calling 'post-traumatic stress disorder.' It makes it sound like I'm diseased. I'm supposed to talk to the analyst about what I feel, but that's hard when the doctor has the lowest level of comprehension of my situation you could imagine. She just doesn't understand.

Tell me, Doctor, what do you know about metaphors?

"Metaphors?" she asks, crossing her legs and rolling her pen through her fingers. "Quite a bit, I should think. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance."

So in other words, one might say, "a part of me has died," when this is not the case literally, but merely a representation of one's feelings.

"Well, yes, I think that sounds about right."

Oh okay, I think I understand now. Thank you, Doctor. You are so terribly clever.

And yet when I say I'm dead you don't seem to hear me.

For it was quite some time ago that I realised I wasn't dead. I never was dead. And I decided I had to stop convincing myself that I could wake up and everything would be back to the peace there was before. I'm alive. I survived. But, metaphorically speaking, I'm still dead.

Doctors. They just don't get it.

Just when things begin to settle and everyone agrees I'm getting more and more stable by the day, I have a major meltdown when they try to make me have a bath.

I used to have a problem telling dreams from reality, and now it's only gotten worse. But I'm beginning to understand how I can tell my nightmares from reality. Being in hospital helps a lot. For instance, if I'm lying quietly in bed and a butterfly flutters through the window and lands on my nose, then begins wrapping me in a cocoon so I can't even move, and I scream and pass out and wake up and the next person that comes into the room doesn't know anything about the butterfly and the giant cocoon, then I can be fairly sure it was a dream. But if I'm standing in the bathroom with a couple of nurses and suddenly the bath they're forcing me into begins to overflow and the room is flooded with water, rushing loudly over my head and drowning me … and when I wake up, a doctor will come and ask me about what happened yesterday in the bathroom and I'll know that at least some of it actually happened. It's just harder to tell when the reality gets replaced by my imagination.

This is also a little bit worrying. Before, I could never tell that what happened was just a dream. Now when I'm awake, I constantly feel like I am dreaming. And when reality can so quickly turn to delusions, I never know when I'm safe.

It reminds me of some dreams I can just barely remember from before I was dead. The jewelled crabs in the cave, the flowers in the jungle, the jumping spiders and bouncing mice and the butterfly passing from Juliet to Lance and the sunset painting the scene red. I haven't learned what happened in the Games exactly, because honestly I'd rather not know. But Finnick mentioned a cave, and that makes me think that those dreams may not have been so imaginary after all.

The next time Finnick shows up, he seems distant. And that's not a metaphor, I mean he _literally_ seems distant. He's sitting far away from the bed, and his voice barely reaches me.

"Come closer," I tell him. He leans forwards but he's still sitting on the other side of the room, which keeps stretching off into the distance. "No," I say. "Come up beside my bed."

"Annie," he says, his voice pulsing through my head as my vision begins to blur. "I can't move any closer." Then he reaches out, his arm stretching impossibly far towards me to take my hand. He gets further and further away, and I look around the see the walls being pushed away from me like a box, or else I'm shrinking in my bed. I look down and my body is way longer than it should be, and the ground is far too close. I snatch my hand away and find that time seems to have doubled, or tripled in speed, and then I'm hyperventilating, then screaming, then the waves rush in and all the noises crash around me again. I clasp my hands over my ears and curl up under the covers. I start to cry, just before I'm knocked out.

When I wake up, Finnick is still there. But he's talking to Nurse Hyde. They see I'm awake and come over.

It's only when Hyde asks me what happened before that I realise it wasn't a dream. And I'm scared. Dreams aren't the problem any more. Even when awake, it's like I'm seeing things that aren't happening. I know that if I explain what happened – visions of the room growing or me shrinking, time speeding up, all the thoughts flying around my head in a frenzy – they'd only think I was crazy. So I say I felt dizzy, and he says that it's just a side-effect of the medication I'm on. Still, he looks a bit concerned, and when he leaves I see him on the other side of the glass, talking to Doctor Jeckyll in the hallway.

Finnick looks totally freaked as well. He sits down in the seat beside my bed with a sigh and rubs his face wearily.

I don't know what's going on. I don't know what to say, so I say nothing.

* * *

What happened to having our sessions here in my room?

Jeckyll laughs, though I don't see what's funny. "You're doing much better, Annie. You should be able to survive a trip down the hallway to my office."

It's just that since you're already here in my room, I don't really see why we have to move.

"Because we do, Annie," she replies.

I hate the nurses and doctors and the way they simply must say my name at the end of every sentence. Yes, Annie. We know, Annie. Don't forget to tie your shoelaces, Annie.

"How are you feeling today, Annie?" she asks when we're sitting down in her office, which is also white and bright, like everything else in this hospital. Her desk is made of glass on thin iron legs that curl up on the floor in fancy spirals. She has a file cabinet, and there's a table beside my chair with a water jug, a potted plant, and a small bowl of mints. There's a plush couch to one side but I refuse to lie down. This psychotherapy stuff is just mumbo-jumbo witchcraft and chanting around a bonfire, if you ask me. I don't need these people to tell me how I'm feeling. And what I'm feeling is none of their business.

I'm feeling fine, _Doctor._

For a while she stares at me, her hands clasped over her knee and her notebook and pen laid forgotten on her desk. She's waiting for me to talk first, to _share._ But I don't. I'm never the first to speak.

"Is there," she pauses speaking to give a heavy sigh, "… anything you'd like to talk about today, Annie?"

I shrug.

She cocks her head to one side, and clears her throat. "Annie, I'd like to write down that you began at least one of our sessions," she says kindly, but the simple statement is dripping in its threatening tone.

You can write down whatever you like, _Doctor._

"There must be something you'd like to share." I purse my lips thoughtfully, then shake my head. She leans forwards, looking at me sternly. "Annie, I can only help you if you tell me how you're feeling. This system of me asking questions and you just answering can't continue. You need to share your thoughts with me."

Well, being forced to share my thoughts doesn't seem like a very good system either.

She frowns at me.

Actually, you know, I do have something I'd like to share.

I think you're very manipulative. And you can't help me.

"Why can't I help you?" she prompts gently.

Because.

I don't need to be helped?

She pauses, picking up her clipboard and scribbling down a few notes as I clench my fists, digging my nails deep into my palms. After a moment she looks up and contemplates me for a moment. When she speaks, her voice sounds soothing. But everything she says is patronising and dishonest.

"Annie, you've been through a great struggle. Nobody is saying that you need help. But you're confused, and this is a very efficient method of getting you through this trauma. I only want to help you."

So you're saying I don't need help yet you need to help me? Get your story straight, Doctor.

"I'm merely saying," she says too calmly, "that speaking to me will do you good."

No. No, it won't. You have no clue – no frigging clue! How do you think it feels, huh? What do you think it's like … to be so c_ompletely convinced that you are going to die?_ You've thought about it over and over. There's no way to avoid it. And you've actually managed to _come to terms with it_. Then it happens, and you're happier than you ever were. How would you feel then, to suddenly wake up, only to find that you're actually still alive? Alive and trapped in a little room when before you were free to roam all over the Earth.

And what's more … you being alive means that your best friend is gone.

Lance is gone and I never get to see him again.

And I got the future he was supposed to have. I stole his life. And he got my future, my death. But knowing how I feel now, and how I felt when I was dying, I know he was the lucky one.

I realise that I'm crying. I'm almost jealous of Lance, you know? And that makes me feel horrible, but I can't help it. He's dead, but in a happier place. That's what I believe, what I've always believed. And I'm the one stuck here, alive and missing him, and forced to spend the rest of my life suffering in this godamn miserable world.

You really want to know what I feel? Scared. Vulnerable. Haunted. Angry. Resentful. Suspicious. Trapped. Lonely. Isolated. Confused. Sad. Jealous. Guilty. Empty. Dying. Dead. Dead. Dead.

I take big gulps of air as the doctor looks at me over the clipboard. A smile pulls at the corners of her mouth.

"I think we've made real progress today."

And that's when I take the potted plant and smash it through her desk.

After that, I take a vow of silence for a while. The only people who come in are those who run tests of my mental and physical condition, and dance around me like I could start spitting fire at any moment. I don't see why I need to talk to an analyst. So maybe every once in a while everything seems to get too loud, and my head begins to rush and my thoughts fly around at ten times the volume and a hundred times the speed. So what if I need to block out the noise for a while? And maybe I forgot a few things. Maybe I still can't remember anything that happened from being taken into a hovercraft before the Games to the moment I felt myself lying in a bed in this place. So what? Finnick filled me in on most of what happened before and after, and I do remember him now. Although, all that Finnick stuff is mighty confusing, but in a different way.

That's the one thing that makes me feel slightly normal when I'm cooped up in this room; wondering about a boy and how he feels about me. I don't know what's going on, because nothing has happened between us since the morning before I went into the arena when we kissed. He's come to visit me a few times, not nearly as many times as I feel he ought to, but even though he holds my hand and still looks at me in that certain way, I still don't know exactly what we are to each other.

I think the first few episodes – anxiety attacks, refusing to go near the bath, fragmented periods of screaming and lying desolate in bed for days on end – are ignored. It's fairly normal, I've been through a lot, as they keep on reminding me. But something seems to change after the episode in Doctor Jeckyll's office. My arms are bandaged from the glass because I fainted again, and there's at least one doctor or attendant standing outside my room at all times, conspicuously spying on me in case I do anything _insane._

When Finnick comes to visit, I'm vaguely suspicious that he's been sent to spy on me too. Still, he's the only person I allow myself to speak to.

"What's going on?" I ask him one day.

Finnick doesn't beat around the bush. He doesn't pretend that nothing is wrong, that everything is normal and things are going as planned. However, just because he's honest doesn't mean he's helpful. "I don't know," he says, sighing tiredly.

"I'm better, amn't I? My lungs can work for themselves again. I can walk, at least down the hall. But I'm still here, and nobody's making plans for me to leave. Why am I still here?"

He meets my eyes, then looks down at our hands, fingers laced together. "The doctors don't seem to think you're quite ready to leave yet."

I roll my eyes. "Because I got angry and smashed a pot?"

"I'd say it's more to do with how you've been teasing them with riddles and speaking in metaphors," he replies with a tiny smile. "And passing out a lot."

I give a small laugh, then look across the room where some natural sunlight is streaming in through the window. Inside the rays you can see the dust swirling around in strange patterns. I remember when that dust was me. When I had no body, just particles floating in the air.

"Look," I tell Finnick, pointing at the dust.

He turns in his seat and looks. "There's nothing there."

I watch his face sadly as he keeps looking, then meets my eyes with his brow furrowed in confusion. "The dust," I say. "Where do you suppose it comes from?"

I can't stand the way he's looking at me, so I return my gaze to the light. "It could be Lance. Just part of the cycle. But Lance wouldn't waste his time in this stuffy room, he's probably out exploring the world."

I don't look at Finnick, but I see him turning towards the window facing the corridor where two nurses, one of them Hyde, are keeping an eye on us.

It takes him a while to voice what he's thinking. He's either too freaked out or can't bring himself to say it. "You … You're not making any sense, Annie."

I close my eyes tight and shake my head. There he goes, saying my name like I'm a stupid child.

I lie down and roll away from him, burying in my face in my pillow.

"On the contrary, Finnick Odair. I've never made more sense in my life."

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily …

I find myself back in Jeckyll's office a few days later, gingerly playing with the leaves of the plant that had to be repotted.

"Now, Annie, I thought you made a rather interesting point in our last session."

I raise my eyes to see the doctor watching me with an unfathomable expression.

"You were talking about Lance." I chew on my lip and she, reluctantly, continues to talk in the hopes I might feel inclined to respond to something she says. "You said that you were almost _jealous_ of him."

I rub my temples. How stupid is this lady? Haven't I made it clear enough that I'm rather upset to find myself still alive?

"Would you prefer to be dead, like Lance?"

Hm … well, yeah. Pretty much.

"Have you," she straightens herself in her chair, "been having any … suicidal feelings?"

I swallow nervously. For once, it's not just my resolution that's keeping me silent. I just honestly don't know how to answer that question. They think I'm crazy, and I don't know how anything I say will convince them otherwise. And then there's the possibility that I actually am crazy. Not just eccentric.

There's a lot of things I can't explain. Why do I mix up dreams and real life, and more recently, build up an imaginary world around things that are actually happening? Why do I see things differently to everyone else? Why do I keep thoughts in my head, only to find they've come out of my mouth without my permission or without me even realising it? Why does time sometimes speed up or slow down, and why do my ears seem to malfunction on occasion?

No, I don't want to kill myself. But then there's my dwelling on my almost-death. Blacking out all the time, smashing a glass desk and cutting myself on the shards when I fall … It was an accident, but they see it as an accident that might possibly have been done on purpose.

"You hardly eat or sleep, and I've never seen anyone sit awake for such lengths of time doing absolutely nothing."

Well, that's not very fair. I've been doing lots of thinking.

"It's been four months, Annie."

… No.

"It's true."

No.

The doctor smiles. "Now, nobody can put a time limit on how long it takes to get over something like this, but –"

Get over it? Get over it? I'm _never_ going to get over it! I can come to terms with it, eventually, _maybe_, but I can never _get over_ it! My best friend is dead!

"Yes. Yes, of course that's what I mean …"

What the …?

"But I'm just saying, that maybe … this is not the best place for you to be any more."

Good. Great.

I took this to mean that they'd finally given up on me. They were finally letting me go home.

But when I next wake up, I'm in a different bed, in a different room. It's less bright, a single lightbulb hangs without a shade over the bed and the walls are painted a sickly sort of mauve colour. I look around the room for a moment, then get up and try the door.

There are two. The first leads out onto a wide hallway, and I catch a glimpse of a few other people ambling around, dressed in pale blue shirts and loose pants like the ones I'm currently wearing. It's not the same hallway that leads to Doctor Jeckyll's office, down underground in the Training Centre. I don't think it's even the same building. But it still looks like a hospital. Another fudging hospital.

I get frightened, and quickly close the door. The second door is of a bathroom with no bath, only a toilet, sink and shower.

I look around the room again. It's nothing as lush as the rooms I had on the train and in the Training Centre, but it's not completely hopeless. It's about as un-Capitolish as I think you can find while still in the Capitol. Fancy enough, but not overdone.

Suddenly, I notice that there are bars on the window.

This doesn't make sense at first, but slowly I walk to the window and look out. There's a sort of yard, with more blue-clothed patients playing some game, and a high fence running all around the outside of the space. Nothing seems too strange at first, but after a moment I notice the way one of the figures stands alone by the fence, gripping the metal wire with his fingers and, seemingly, muttering to himself. Someone else is staggering around aimlessly in circles. One of the people playing the game keeps throwing the ball in the wrong direction, and another player gets mad and shouts every time this happens, a grown woman whining and stamping her feet.

There has to be some mistake, I try to tell the doctors. I appear to be in some sort of mental institution.

"It's only temporary," they assure me in their cheerful voices, which are even more condescending than the staff at the Tributes' hospital. Over and over they tell me. "Just until you're feeling fully stable again."

Problem is, I've never felt fully stable in my entire life.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

Everything that doesn't make sense is suddenly proved irrelevant when I learn one simple truth.

There is, believe it or not, one thing worse than therapy. And that is group therapy.

I need to get outta this place ASAP. It's completely insane here. If I stay any longer, it'll drive me off the edge! If I haven't already fallen, I mean. No one has told me exactly what they think is my problem, I haven't been diagnosed. All they tell me is that it's 'something more.' I don't know what that means. Something more than they expected? Something more than afflicts the average survivor of the Hunger Games?

It's crazy. Total absurdity.

Doctor Jeckyll is here, too, unfortunately, I can't escape from that. But it explains a lot, actually. This is where she works throughout the year, except for when she's called to the hospital in the Training Centre for 'special cases.' Like me. And I spent too long in the care of those people, months and months longer than most tributes. After a while they wondered if my trauma would pass at all. So I'm sent here, to see if I qualify for some sort of neurosis. The doctor was only dying for me to be placed fully in her clutches.

If I stay here, I'll pretty soon spiral into complete lunacy. So the way I see it, I have only one option. I have to convince Doctor Jeckyll that I'm perfectly sane.

Which I am. I am. I swear I am, and I don't usually swear. I know I'm not crazy. Even if I am, I'd prefer to be insane in the comfort of my own home.

Group therapy! Oh man. Oh man, oh man, it's just awful. It's all I can do not to break down into tears for every minute of every session.

I attend my first meeting on the day after my arrival here. By my arrival I mean when I woke up after being taken here in the dead of night while I was sleeping. There's nothing suspicious about those circumstances at all. (And that's very heavy sarcasm, by the way.)

I haven't talked to anyone, I've hardly even left my room. But a nurse calls for me and brings me out where a group of ten, maybe a dozen individuals are setting their chairs in a semicircle. I count them before I sit down. There are thirteen including me and the doctor, who sits in front of us. I'm reluctant to join them because for one thing, I don't know anybody and I'm feeling kind of shy all of a sudden, and for another thing, I'm a little superstitious.

But I sit down anyway, between an old lady wearing plastic gloves and a hairnet and a middle-aged man with no hair on his head but plenty on his face, who sets his chair backwards and sits with his elbows resting on the back of it.

Doctor Jeckyll smiles around at everyone in that false, sinister kind of way, and then says, "Well, everyone, we have a new patient joining us today. Let's all give a warm welcome to Annie."

"Welcome, Annie," comes a chorus of bored voices. Only half the half-circle joins in, and absolutely everyone stares at me, their mouths agape.

"Now," says the doctor sternly, "that wasn't nearly as warm as it could be."

"Welcome, Annie!" they repeat. It's painful, it really is. I get a scattered round of applause, too. As if I deserve praise for finding myself in a place like this.

"Annie, why don't you stand up and tell the group why you are here."

It's not a suggestion. It's an order. I stare blankly at her for a moment.

… Seriously?

She nods once, smiling.

Uncertainly, I stand. Um … I look around. I'm Annie Cresta. I'm recovering from a, uh … stressful experience. I glance at the doctor, and her face has not moved an inch. I realise that I'm expected to continue.

"It's okay, Annie," she pushes. "Tell the Group what has happened to you."

I'm completely horrified. I don't want to tell the Group anything. I look around and a youngish-looking boy sitting across from me catches my eyes, then quickly looks down at his hands. Everyone else keeps staring at me, waiting. I can feel my face growing red and I close my eyes. But something reminds me that I have to make Jeckyll happy if I want to get out of the place. So I take a deep breath, and I begin.

I was chosen to compete in the 70th Hunger Games, along with my best friend, Lance. I … I – Lance was … um, _killed_ … in the Games. I survived. I almost drowned. I … I've had a fear of the water since I was nine years old. I lost my parents in a sailing accident. I shake my head, my eyes still closed. I don't know what else …

"That's good, Annie," Jeckyll interrupts. There's a small silence before she speaks again. "Does anyone have anything they'd like to share about what Annie has said?"

I open my eyes, and everyone looks around at each other uncomfortably. It's the man sitting beside me who speaks first. He doesn't look at me. "We already know who she is, Doc. We've seen her whole story up on that there telly-vision set."

I fall back into my seat, gripping the sides tightly as a jumble of opinions and questions are put forward.

"We did, we did, we saw it!"

"It was a bad year …" sighs a man with neatly combed hair and a neatly combed moustache.

"I thought it was good!" shouts a young woman.

"No, no, no, it was awful," the man disagrees.

"I thought it was average!" mutters someone else.

"We saw it, we did! We all saw it!" the fist person cries.

"No, no, no, Billy didn't see it," the neat gentleman sighs.

"Nobody cares about Billy!" barks the man beside me.

The boy across from me looks up and opens his mouth, but doesn't say anything.

"Mr MacCruiskeen, that's not a kind thing to say to Billy."

"Sorry, lad!" yells Mr MacCruiskeen, and then begins to cackle loudly.

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.

The boy sitting across from me gives Mr MacCruiskeen a meek little nod, and I suspect that this is Billy.

"Hey, how come we never seen you in any of them interviews?" asks a quiet girl sitting near him.

It takes me a moment to realise that she's talking to _me. _

Um, I don't know-

"Annie hasn't been well enough to give any interviews," says the doctor mildly, interrupting me again. I glare at her. I do not enjoy being spoken for.

"When do we get to see interviews?"

"Isn't the Victory Tour coming up?"

"Will you be doing that, too? Will you? Will you, will y-"

"So were you and Lance in love or what?"

I shake my head in bewilderment, and look to the doctor for some kind of gesture.

Can't you do anything about this?

"What do you mean, Annie?"

I look around. I mean, I'm not comfortable being bombarded with all these questions! Especially, I mean, in my condition …

Everyone falls suddenly silent.

"And … what would your condition be, Annie?"

I don't know. Shouldn't you be telling me?

"Why don't tell the group what _you_ think your condition might be," she says.

I give a sigh. I'm confused, that's all I know. Dazed and confused.

"I know that feeling," slurs Mr MacCruiskeen, grinning widely through his beard and nudging me amiably with his elbow. Morphling addict, I'm guessing.

"If you don't feel like talking about it, we won't force you. But remember what I've said about how it might help to share your feelings and thoughts."

Okay.

I still don't feel like talking.

The doctor smiles tightly at me, then looks down on her clipboard. "Well, let's see. Our last meeting ended with Billy talking about his job interview. Why don't we start there."

Billy looks up suddenly, and his eyes flit around the Group once or twice. Maybe I'm imagining it, but I sense his eyes hovering over me more than with the others. He looks about as old as Finnick but somehow it's hard to tell. He's got dirty blonde hair that grows like a mop on top and short on the sides. He straightens up his gangly body, inhaling deeply, then shakes his head jerkily and hunches over again, pulling his knees up to his chin and peering out over the top of them at the doctor.

"The pretty girl's got the kid all shy!" hollers MacCruiskeen.

Billy shakes his head fervently, and I find my hands reaching up to cover my ears. It doesn't really block out anything, but it's still a small comfort.

"Billy, you were talking about the interview you went to before the summer started."

Billy gives a small sniff, but doesn't say anything. He drops his knees and twists his hands in his lap, opening and closing his mouth, but he still can't seem to get the words out.

I feel like it's my fault. I get uncomfortable when talking in front of people I don't know, too. Should I leave?

Billy looks up and meets my eyes, but we both look at Doctor Jeckyll when she speaks. "No, Annie, you don't need to go anywhere."

I look at my hands, blushing furiously. I hadn't even realised I had spoken aloud. That keeps happening …

"Billy," continues the doctor, "why don't you tell us more about the job." He pauses, and opens his mouth, but for some reason the doctor cuts across him. "You said you hoped you'd be able to afford to go to college if you got the job."

He blinks, and swallows slightly, then tries to speak again. When a minute passes and he still hasn't come out with it, she interrupts him again.

"But you didn't get the job, did you, Billy? … Why do you think that is?"

Billy takes a deep, shuddering breath and his shoulders hunch over. Staring at his hands, he lifts his head as if he's about to speak.

"You said that was what drove you to try to kill yourself again," says the doc.

There's a sudden hush, and everyone tries not to look too awkward. When before Billy looked like he was trying to speak and failing, now he just tightens his lips and stares at the floor.

"Billy, if you don't want to talk we won't force you-" the doctor begins, but something cuts her off. It's a moment before I realise it's my own voice.

"He's trying to talk, but you're hardly giving him a chance!" I say, my voice sounding slightly muffled to me as I'm still covering my ears with both hands. Everyone turns and stares at me. Billy's eyes are wide, and Jeckyll is fixing me with a frown so serious my eyes drop to the floor and I instantly shut my mouth. I realise how quiet everyone was while she was attacking Billy, and wonder if this is something I should know not to get involved in.

"Annie," she says calmly, "you've had your turn to speak. Now it's Billy's turn."

I can't help it. The words are out of my mouth before I even get the chance to think about them. "But you won't let him speak! You just keep shooting questions at him before he gets a chance to answer them!"

Doctor Jeckyll inhales and exhales deeply. "It's Billy's turn to speak right now," she repeats.

A fragmented, mumbly voice makes everyone's head turn. Billy's eyes widen even further and he rubs the back of his neck a few times.

"What was that, Billy? We didn't quite hear you."

He gives a little gasp of nervous laughter, still rubbing his neck. "I … I, um, I don't … r-really – really feel like speaking …" His voice trails away so the final word is almost inaudible. He gives a small, timid smile then drops his head shamefully.

Doctor Jeckyll shoots me a glare of pure hatred. "That's all right, Billy," she says, although her tone suggests that it's far from all right. Billy glances up for a fleeting moment, and I catch his eye. I try for a smile, and his face sort of twitches before he becomes very interested in his hands again.

The rest of the meeting is spent with the neatly combed man speaking about his wife, and Mr MacCruiskeen challenging everyone's viewpoints, and the girl whose name I can't quite get a grasp on repeating whatever everyone says.

I hold back afterwards, staying in my chair until the lady with the gloves tells me I have to tidy my chair away, and goes off muttering about order and cleanliness. I see Billy taking a little too much time stacking his chair in the corner, so I go over and add my chair to the pile.

He's standing a bit away, and when he turns around he catches me watching him with interest. Immediately, he acts like he didn't see me, and puts his hands in his pockets and moves around for a moment as if he can't decide which direction to take. Then, it seems like he resolves to approach me. And that he does.

He stops a few feet away from me, and gives a shy little wave. I wave back, and wait for him to say something. But he doesn't.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to butt in like that," I say. "This therapy stuff just gets to me, I think."

He rubs his neck and looks down at his shoes, which don't have laces. "N-n-n-no … I w-wanted to-to-to … to thank you."

He closes his eyes and grimaces, as if it was the hardest thing in the world to say just that. I study him carefully for a moment. "Um … Am I making you uncomfortable right now?"

His eyes widen. "N-no, I-I-I … just, I … um …" He gives his jaw a small jerk and averts his eyes, and I understand that he's not stuttering because I'm making him uncomfortable. He's just stuttering because that's what he does. Suddenly, I'm even more angry at Doctor Jeckyll for not giving him time to speak. It must be so infuriating, people not waiting to get a sentence out when it's that difficult as it is!

I feel like he doesn't want to get into it, so I just nod and smile.

He takes his hands out of his pockets and wrings them together, then gestures with one, saying, "Oh, um, congrat-" he pauses and jerks his head "-gratulations. On w-w-winning. The Games …"

Now I just stare blankly at him. And he notices, because he frowns deeply and turns away. "Sorry, sorry. Stupid thing to say. St-stupid …"

He begins to walk off down the corridor, hunching his shoulders and shoving his hands back into his pockets. I find myself running up beside him.

"No … it's fine," I say. He stops walking and looks at me curiously. I press my lips together and look down. "What were you going to say?"

It takes him a while, but he gets there eventually. "It mustn't be very n-n-n-nice. Sorry about … about your f-friend." He gives me a smile and I find myself smiling sadly back. I feel like he's the first person to say that who genuinely means it. Which isn't true, because Finnick has definitely mentioned it. But just those two.

Billy suddenly looks around a bit frantically, then leans down towards me, motioning with a finger. I look at him cautiously but turn my head so he can cup his hand around his mouth and whisper in my ear.

"I d-d-don't really like that show, you know."

I take a step back and look up and this guy. "Really?" I ask, and he nods fervently, putting his finger to his lips and looking around as if there could be spies behind any of the doors. "But … But you're from the Capitol, right?"

He nods again. "N-n-not everyone here thinks it's a good th-thing."

I'm totally flabbergasted. I thought everyone in the Capitol loved the Games. "Do you know a lot of people who think like that?"

He looks down, rubbing his neck. "N-n-no," he admits. "N-not really."

I laugh a little, then look down and pick at some stray threads from the bandages on my arm. Billy notices this, and holds out his own arm. "Look," he said, "we m-m-match."

He's got white linen wrapped around both of his wrists. I look up at Billy, and remember what Doctor Jeckyll had tried to make him speak about during the group therapy session. I haven't the heart to tell him my cuts were an accident, when I doubt his were at all. So instead I say, "Do you want to be my friend?"

In reply, he simply beams at me.

Billy Timpleton is a child trapped in a twenty-nine-and-a-half year old's body. He stutters and has phobias of pretty much everything, including the television. And while I was on every screen in Panem, from the reapings to the final day in the arena, Billy was locked in what was more or less a padded room, after his most recent attempt at killing himself.

Other than a few issues, he's one of the sweetest guys I've ever met.

I discover that he's the most perfect friend I could ask for right now, because he has no idea about what happened in my Hunger Games, and he hasn't brought up the subject since that very first conversation we had. As for me, he likes being friends because I don't try to finish his sentences for him.

Billy tells me about what life is like on the ward, how Doc (as they all call Doctor Jeckyll), is pretty much evil incarnate and about all our fellow patients. Nobody is forced to stay, exactly, but they've all been pressured into admitting themselves. Like Billy, whose doctor told him it would be better for his family to see him being taken care of properly. That was even before he tried to kill himself. He wouldn't want to make things hard for them, intruding on their lives when they don't have the time to give him the help he apparently needs. Funny, because I thought that was what family was for.

Sometimes he talks like he knows it's not right, but other times I think he believes it. He's afraid of the world. He's not ready to go out into it on his own. He's been in and out of this hospital for a whopping seven years.

I line up for medication like everyone else, I eat in the cafeteria and go to arts and crafts and music lessons. I manage to survive group therapy every day by sitting beside Billy. We communicate in sighs when Doc gives someone a hard time, or when someone gives her a hard time which is funnier but kind of scary. We only speak up when it's our turn, so I learn to hold my tongue and talk about nobody's problems but my own.

I start to relax, to get comfortable. It's hard to remember that there's anything outside this place, it feels like its own little world in itself. Because these people are like the rejects of the Capitol. The people that are an embarrassment, too shameful to keep around in normal society. They are from the Capitol and they have Capitol values, but there's no showy fashion, hairstyles, tattoos or make-up. We all wear the same outfits, and not many people bother with grooming. There's a girl who comes back with a new haircut after going out on a Saturday with her mother. Although her bright red hair looks nicer now that it's not yellowing and faded, the tight curls quickly grow lank after a few days of neglect. There's a girl ten years older than me who carries around a pink hairbrush wherever she goes. But other than that, most people have to be reminded just to wash their faces in the morning.

The place isn't as depressing as it first seemed to be. The dull yard outside my window is just the back, but there's massive gardens all around the building, which is huge and pretty luxurious. There's a whole room dedicated to arts and crafts, and another to music lessons. The showers have almost as many buttons as the ones in the Training Centre. The food isn't even half bad, but I've been warned to keep my distance from the meatloaf. They call it a clinic, rather than a hospital.

To many of the people here, it's as good as a home.

We have group sessions outside in the sun when the weather's nice, which it often is even though it's pretty much winter by now. One day we're out in the gardens and Billy is telling the Group about how he ended up here in the first place. He was obsessed with a girl – her name was Candy and he loved her – but when he asked her to marry him he found out that she was actually engaged to someone else. He was twenty-two at the time, and that was the first time he tried to kill himself. He didn't like the thought that he had been in the Clinic pretty much ever since then, but he was reluctant to brave the outside world. The last time he tried going home, he couldn't find a job because he'd been away from normal society for such a long time, and the one interview he got, he blew completely. It was so overwhelming, and he couldn't take it. Now he's wondering if he'll ever be able to find his place in the real world.

"That was very good, Billy," says Doc. "Does anyone want to add anything to what Billy has said?" Nobody speaks. "Annie?"

I glance up from staring at the floor, sitting cross-legged in my chair with my chin in my palm.

She smiles at me. "You seemed very affected while Billy was speaking. Anything you'd like to share?"

I swallow nervously. "Oh … No, it's nothing. I think I understand how he feels, that's all."

The Doc cocks her head to one side and repositions her clipboard. "Well, if Billy is finished speaking, you would be free to talk about it. Billy, are you finished speaking?"

Billy throws me a worried look, but nods a few times.

"Go ahead, Annie," Doc says encouragingly.

I take a few deep breaths and try to pretend I'm just talking to Billy. Or, even better, Finnick. Like the way I could speak to him before all this happened. In all honesty, Billy and Candy had sort of reminded me of Finnick somehow. Billy had thought that Candy was in love with him too, but realises now that she wasn't, and never was. Suddenly I'm worried that I've made up the whole affair with Finnick, and that's the scariest thought I've had for a while.

But I couldn't admit any of this, because how could I explain my relationship with Finnick to these people? It was the one thing I had kept to myself this whole time. So I just pretended I was talking privately to Billy, or Finnick, or even Lance (even though I can't speak to Lance where he is), and told the truth about the other worries I had.

"I dunno … I guess it just got me thinking about going back to District Four," I say, nervously touching my lips.

"Could you remove your hand from over your mouth, please, Annie?" says Doc. "We can't quite hear you."

"I can hear 'er," grumbles Mr MacCruiskeen, who's sitting across the circle from me. I hear Billy give a muffled chortle masked by a cough and I smile.

Doc smiles tightly. "Please continue, Annie."

"Um, I dunno," I say, placing my hands firmly on my knees. "I just think about going home and it seems so far away. I guess I'm not really sure what I'll be going back to. I mean, Lance won't be there. And I'll have to see all the places we used to go together … It feels like it'll be an entirely different place to me without him."

"And what about your grandparents?"

"That's the weird thing," I admit. "I can't imagine seeing them again. I was so sure I never would … It feels like so much has changed, that I knew them in a different world, a different life … I don't know what it'll be like to leave here."

"Well, Annie, you know that you can spend as much time as you need," she says slowly, comfortingly. "You can stay here for as long as you want."

Yeah. I know that. And that's what worries me.

After the session, Doc announces that it's Friday. And _everyone_ knows what that means.

"What does that mean?" I ask Billy, as everyone groans loudly.

"Private th-th-therapy," he tells me. "One on-on-on one."

"But … isn't that better?" I ask curiously.

"M-m-mostly it just m-makes it easier for Doc to keep us in line."

I think about this as we sit down on the garden patio, and I try to teach him how to make daisy chains for the six hundredth time. It makes me edgy because it only reminds me that my hands shake as much as his, and it's almost impossible to thread the stems of the tiny flowers together.

"Did-did you mean what you said? About n-n-not … not leaving?"

"I dunno," I reply. "The more I settle in here the harder it is to think about going home."

"You d-d-don't wanna get stuck here, Annie," he says quietly. He meets my eyes for a moment, then averts his gaze. Suddenly he jerks his head around and picks up a bunch of daisies, whispering out of the corner of his mouth, "Shh-shh, the Doc's c-coming."

"Oh, mm hm, I do love the meatloaf here!" I say loudly.

"M-me too. Oh, I, um, hi D-D-Doctor Jeckyll."

"Hello, Billy. Hello, Annie."

"Hiya," I reply, smiling up at her.

"We were just m-m-ma-" he stops and blinks furiously a few times. "M-m-making d-d …"

"Daisy chains," she interrupts, and Billy bows his head. "How lovely. Well, Annie, you've got a visitor."

"Me?" I ask quickly. "Me? Me – Are you sure-"

I'm silenced when I look towards the glass sliding doors that lead into the atrium, to see Finnick standing there, a small visitor tag attached to his shirt even though its obvious enough that he's not a patient here.

He sees me and gives a small wave. Doc beckons him over, and Billy and I have jumped to our feet by the time he reaches us.

"Finnick!" I exclaim. "This is a surprise. Oh, um, Billy, this is Finnick. Finnick – Billy."

The two of them shake hands, and it's the weirdest sight I have ever seen. One of them is a teenager who was forced to grow up too fast, and the other is a man who never managed to grow up at all. It's weirder than the first time I saw Finnick and Lance sizing each other up. I've just never seen anyone built as lanky as Billy. Boys aren't built like that in District 4.

"How's it going?" asks Finnick.

Billy is literally rendered speechless.

"Oh dear, they've planted white roses instead of red," complains Doc. "Billy, why don't you help me find the gardener."

Billy shoots me a worried look, but the two of them leave. Finnick and I are left standing together, smiling at each other and completely incapable of thinking of anything to say.

"They could always paint the roses red," I say eventually.

Finnick smiles at me. "You wanna take a walk?" he asks.

I nod, and we head out along a path with hedge sculptures on either side.

"I'm sorry I couldn't visit any sooner, I-"

"It's okay, Finnick," I say quickly. "I get it. You're a busy man."

He looks at me, furrowing his brow. "I really am sorry, I mean they were already suspicious at how much interest I've been showing since you came out of the arena and-"

"Finnick," I say firmly. "It's fine. Really." I smile at him, and after a second he smiles back.

"It seems nice here," he says cautiously. "How do you find it?"

"Um … It's not quite as bad as I thought it would be," I reply.

He nods. "I see you've made some friends," he says, nodding to where Billy is ambling around the corner to the yard, turning to shoot us a couple of wary glances as he goes.

"Friend, singular. Just the one."

Finnick stops at a fountain and gently run his fingertips through the water. He turns slightly to grin at me. "Seems like you always have some boyfriend that I have to compete with."

I stare at him for a moment, and he presses his lips together.

"Sorry, I'm cursed with a constant need to make highly inappropriate jokes. Unfortunately that's the only mechanism I have for dealing with stuff …"

I laugh a little. "No, it's not that. But I'm guessing you're talking about Lance, in which case I see you're still a total idiot." He laughs and grins his dorky grin at me, and butterflies seem to squirm like worms in my belly. "And Billy's almost thirty. I have to draw the line somewhere with the age difference, Finnick." He grins again, and turns his head shyly back to the fountain. I suddenly realise that I have no problem speaking my thoughts, just not to doctors. So I say, "Anyway, if you're involved I don't think it's much of a competition …"

I don't know what I'm expecting, but he just smiles slightly, then frowns, then changes the subject. "So, do you think you'll be staying here long?"

I frown, and kick at the gravel. "I dunno … As long as I need, I guess." I pause. "Finnick, how long were you in recovery afterwards?"

"Me?" he asks quickly, and chews his lip. "I dunno … A couple weeks."

I try to meet his eyes but he's avoiding my gaze. "How many weeks?"

"Uh … one. Half. Okay, maybe … three days?"

"Three days!" I exclaim, running my hands through my hair.

"Well, I didn't have a Lance situation! Or a phobia of water only to have the arena flood. Or … eccentricities to begin with …"

He looks at me, biting his teeth together in a pained smile. I meet his eyes with a sense of dread. "Do you think I'm crazy?"

"Why, Annie, I've always thought you were crazy," he says, and grins widely at me.

I laugh and hit his arm, and he looks around for a moment with his hands in his pockets.

Turning to look at me, he takes a deep breath before starting to speak in a low voice. "Look, I just wanted to let you know that … I mean, the thing that happened to me after my Games, it won't happen to you." He raises his eyebrows at me, but I just blink back at him in astonishment. He swallows slightly nervously and continues. "For one, if you're unwell they wouldn't … well, you know. For another thing, I won't let it happen. That's a promise."

My heart is beating loudly in my chest, and I bring my hands up to my ears for a moment to think. Of all the things I've been worried about, I have to admit this was the last thing to cross my mind. I had totally forgotten about Finnick's … problem. And all of a sudden the outside world is looking a whole lot scarier. My hands drop limply by my sides as my head stops spinning a bit. "So all this time I've been trying to act sane so that they'll let me go home, and you're saying that being crazy is saving me from … from that situation?"

Finnick meets my eyes, and tucks a piece of hair gently behind my ear. "I'm saying you don't need to worry about that," he says softly. His brow wrinkles. "You need to _try_ to act _sane_?"

I avert my eyes hurriedly and shrug. "Ugh, I don't even know any more."

I place my hands on the edge of the stone fountain, and after a moment I feel his hand on top of mine. Suddenly a rush of memories come back to me, and not in the panicked, flooding sort of way that I've become accustomed to recently. No horrifying flashbacks, just a flutter of the heart remembering the touches we shared on the comfy sofa the night before the Hunger Games, a fresh blush as the loving, caring words that were said.

Finnick looks down at me now and smiles, and I feel safe. It's as if I'm falling for him all over again.

"So … no competition at all, huh?" he whispers, and I laugh and look down shyly at my feet.

He wraps his arms around me and I sigh slightly and press my face against his chest. When pulling away, he very briefly brushes his lips to my cheek. Then he tells me he has to leave, and he's gone just like that. And I'm left standing in the middle of the hedgerows all alone.

I make my way around the back to the yard, and find Billy sitting on the ground with his back to the wall, watching some of the others playing with the ball. His eyes are always trained on one girl, Fliss, the one with the pink hairbrush. He told me before that the first time he met her he tried to tell her that she had pretty hair, but she just walked away from him.

He found out later that she's diagnosed as lacking in basic social skills and so she didn't actually mean to be rude to him, but he's been too shy to try to talk to her again. But since I've made friends with Billy, I've noticed her paying a lot more attention to him. Like right now, she's looking across the yard at him and completely misses her catch. I don't think Billy actually intended to use me to make her jealous – after all, it was me who suggested we be friends in the first place – but it just so happens that I'm delighted to help bring two people together.

"Annie and Finnick, sitting in a tree," sings Billy quietly, grinning slyly as I approach him and sit down next to him.

I blush a little, but don't respond because Fliss suddenly appears in front of us.

Her brush is tucked under one arm, the ball under the other, and she still manages to twirl her hair around her finger as she says, "Wanna join the ball game?"

Billy looks from Fliss to me and back, and then says, "N-n-n-no … thank you. We're having a con-c-conversation."

She narrows her eyes, but shrugs and walks away.

"Is Finnick gonna t-t-take you away from the Clinic?" Billy asks me.

I hug my knees. "I really have no idea."

Just as I'm beginning to believe that I belong here, that it's safer for me to hide away in my own little world and never venture out into the life of a victor, something happens later that day that convinces me otherwise. Mr MacCruiskeen has some sort of seizure and it's like nothing I've ever seen before. Nothing I have experienced has been anything like that, and he has to be dragged away by two care assistants and sealed in another room. Then there's chaos, everyone is screaming, banging on doors, demanding more medication or to be taken off medication, demanding cigarettes and better care and shock treatment and all these things that don't have anything to do with anything, and I run back outside to the yard and sit down on the ground with my hands clamped over my ears.

That's when I realise that no matter what might be wrong with me, I don't belong in a place like this. These people have problems that aren't always clear, and aren't easily identified, whereas I know that all my problems stem from one significant source. The Capitol. More importantly, the Hunger Games. I wasn't crazy before and I can go back to that way, I mean I'm already halfway there. I'm not seeing things so much any more. I get nightmares, but I wouldn't be a victor if I didn't have a few scars here and there.

All I know is that I can't stay here any longer. No matter how safe it is, I can't pretend this fantasy land can shield me from the reality of the world. I need to face my problems and overcome them, not give in to them.

The yard fills up again, and Billy comes straggling behind the others, looking pretty shaken up. For all the trouble Mr MacCruiskeen causes, everyone still kind of loves him.

"Bill, I need to get out of here," I tell him straight out.

He nods and twists his fingers. "You d-d-d-don't want to find yourself st-stuck here after seven … seven years," he says.

"You could leave as well, you know."

He just shakes his head. "You n-need to do real good in therapy to-to-today."

I sigh and rub my eyes wearily. "How?"

He purses his lips and we sit in thoughtful silence for a moment. "Think like a n-n-normal teenager," he says suddenly. "With n-normal teenage pr-problems."

I look at him, and find a smile creeping slowly across my face.

Right on cue, Doc appears and tells me it's my turn for a one-on-one session with her.

"Do me a favour," I tell Billy, "and go play ball with Fliss. The two of you have been eye-flirting all week."

I leave him staring dumbstruck at my back as I walk off.

"Annie," says the Doc, giving me a smile that sends shiver down my spine. "How are you feeling today?"

"Pretty good, actually," I reply, giving her a warm smile back.

"You sound surprised," she says.

"Well, I've been feeling down for so long … I guess it _is_ surprising. But I just realised that there's a whole world outside of here that I'm missing out on. I mean, I'm never going to forget what has happened, what I've lost … but that doesn't mean I can't go on with my life."

"It's good that you feel that way," she responds with another smile, but doesn't mention anything about letting me go.

I swallow slightly. "Yeah, I don't think Lance wants me to be miserable forever, anyway."

Doc picks up her clipboard and scratches a few notes. "Well, Annie, it looks like you're well on the way to recovery. Let's hope your mood continues to improve, hm?"

I nod feverishly.

"Is there … anything you're still confused about? Any bad dreams or confusing memories, maybe?"

Or when I'm allowed to go home? "Um … Actually there is something. Oh, but it's nothing, really …" I turn my face and sneak a glance at her out of the corner of my eye. She sits up and leans her elbows on her desk.

"No problem is too big or too small, Annie."

"Well …" I start, then take a deep breath or three. Time to be a normal teenager with normal teenage problems. I just hope I can pull it off. "Well … before I went into the Games … there was this … boy."

I look at my hands and smile rather bashfully, and I can see her smiling too. I don't know how I ever doubted myself. I'm just a normal teenage girl, with all my problems in life circling around teenage boys.

"So this boy and I got on really really well and we really liked each other. Well, he led me to believe he liked me, anyway. But since I've come out of the arena … it's been a bit weird with us. Neither of us expected me to live at all. And I guess I'm just worried that while I was gone he just got over it. Or that he doesn't feel the same way any more. Or that he only said those things because he knew he'd never have to see me again."

"This boy …" Jeckyll says slowly. "You've seen him since you got out of the arena?"

"Yeah, but neither of us have tried to … you know, talk about what happened between us." I look up at her, and find that I'm hardly acting at all. "I'm starting to think I made the whole thing up in my head."

To my surprise, she puts down the clipboard and pen and smiles at me. Then she tells me she'll be back in a moment, and leaves the office.

I'm just sitting there on the couch, feeling confused and a little forsaken, when the door opens again and who enters, but Finnick Odair, bright and fair, combing down his ginger hair …

He grins at me but my hands are already covering my face.

"Oh my gosh, tell me you didn't hear all that!"

"Hear what?" he asks innocently, the humour evident in his voice.

"Oh my gosh," I moan.

"Oh come on! Stop being embarrassed. Here-" I feel him sit down close beside me on the couch, and grapple with my hands for a moment before I lower them reluctantly to cover only the bottom half of my face.

"This is _not_ funny," I say, my voice muffled.

He laughs, and runs a hand through his hair.

"Why are even still here? I thought you left ages ago!"

"I was chatting to some people," he says, raising his arms in a shrug.

"Doctors or patients?" I ask suspiciously.

"Look, it doesn't matter!" he says loudly, taking my face in his hands and pulling my hands away. "I'm here now, and I think there's a certain chat the two of us need to have."

Oh my gosh. Oh my _gosh._

"Shh," he whispers, wetting his lips slightly with his tongue and grinning. I'm just about melting at this stage, and his eyes flash with amusement as my hand reaches for my mouth again.

He takes my free hand and speaks to it. "Do you remember the last thing I said to you … on the second last night in the Training Centre?"

Um, oh gosh. Not a test … That was so long ago! It's a good five minutes before I answer. "'Quite the opposite, actually?'"

For a moment he just stares at me. He blinks and presses his lips together but can't stop a grin spreading across his face. "Before that," he says.

"Um …" I chew my lip, thinking as hard as I can. "'Right … Right.'"

"Uh, no, just right before that part, actually," he says.

Suddenly, I feel the colour creeping up my neck. I don't know how he even manages to hear me as I mutter, "'Would it be … really inappropriate if I were to kiss you right now?''"

"That's the one," he chuckles, and his eyes drop quickly to my lips before he meets my eyes once again. "Were you asking me that just now, or just repeating what I said?"

"Repeating what you said," I answer.

He grins widely, and I realise how close we are. It's like those bright green eyes are all I can see.

"So … would it be really inappropriate if I were to kiss you right now?" he murmurs, his eyes flicking to my lips again.

"Well …" I start, and he grins even more. "We are in my analyst's office. In a mental clinic. And I might be crazy. So it might be inappropriate, yeah … but not entirely … unwelcome-"

He interrupts me by pulling me into a kiss, and I don't object at all. I gladly kiss him back.

I take a moment to fill myself up with this new feeling of warmth, which I realise is happiness. We pull away slightly and I keep my eyes closed, smiling to myself as he links his fingers through mine, and takes my face in his other hand.

Suddenly, I'm reminded of a loaf of bread, still warm.

"I didn't want to rush things, until you were better-"

"Finnick, I don't care about that. Just please tell me I'm not dreaming."

He chuckles, and I grin. "But it's not like you'd believe me, anyway."

I sigh. "I suppose you're right. Oh, well. You'll just have to kiss me again in case I wake up."

He laughs again, and pulls my face to press our lips together again. I reach up to touch his chest, his shoulders, and he wraps his warms around my waist, pulling me closer to him.

Then suddenly I feel dizzy, and not in a good, in-love sort of way. And here comes the familiar feeling of everything getting too loud, and I'm sinking, and I peck Finnick quickly on the mouth before pulling away and pinning my hands over my ears.

"Oh – Are you okay?" he asks, his voice full of concern.

"Fine," I whimper, screwing my eyes shut and laying my head down so I don't collapse and smash another glass table. With one ear pressed against the sofa, I reach for his hand.

I hear more voices, but everything's rushing in my head now. Just before I float into the blackout, I hear his voice clearly above all the others.

"I love you."

But I'm not sure if I'm dreaming yet.

When I wake up in my bed in the Clinic, he's asleep in a chair. I watch him until he wakes up, and then I begin spewing apologies. How embarrassing, to pass out from making out!

"Stop it," he says. "It's fine. It's just that I'm such a good kisser that I made you swoon."

"Swooning sounds a lot nicer than passing out," I laugh. "I should start saying that more often."

"Okay, but no more kissing or swooning until you're better, okay?"

I sigh, but pretend to agree. He seems disappointed that I wasn't more disappointed. "Are you allowed in here? In my room?"

He looks around. "Yeah, but they made us leave the door open."

I nod, and watch his face as he watches mine. I start to smile, then give another sigh.

Down in the valley where the green grass grows,  
Sat little Annie, sweet as a rose.  
She sang, she sang, she sang so sweet.  
Along came a boy and kissed her on the cheek.

I look up at Finnick, who is trying not to laugh.

"How many kisses did he give her?" I ask him with a grin. I shoot him a significant look and turn my face to offer him my cheek.

He rolls his eyes, but gets up to lean over and plant a kiss on my cheek. He lingers, and I turn my head and pull him down by the neck to kiss his mouth.

He pulls back a little, knitting his brow as he meets my eyes. "Hey, don't swoon or anything."

"I won't. It won't happen again," I promise.

"You're sure?" he asks, nudging my nose a little with his own and grinning cheekily. I nod. "Then I guess kissing isn't a problem, is it?"

"Nope."

"Hang on," he says, and presses his lips against mine. Then again a few times, slowly. Then he opens his mouth slightly, runs his tongue gently along my bottom lip, and I'm melting like gum on the pavement in sunny weather. He opens his eyes and says, "You still feeling okay?"

"I'm perfect," I say breathlessly.

He grins, and we kiss properly. I run my hands through his (ginger) hair, and he sighs and whispers, "Well, _I_ certainly think so."

That's certainly the only word for what this is. Perfect. Or maybe transplendent, but I think that sounds a little too phantasmagorical, so I'll stick with perfect.

It's perfect.

* * *

Please please please review! :D :D :D :D You must realise why you need to review! You must! Yay Finnie! xD I'm so thrilled at everyone's reactions, but I'm all up for constructive criticism as well, if you've got any. But I'll just guess people are busy with holidays or exams and stuff. Thanks to everyone for reading, and it definitely does not end here folks!


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